[luatex] Vital RTL issues in LuaTeX

[Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي ح]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:43:31 -0600, وفا خلیقی <vafakh9 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  It is unfortunately a misunderstanding that in RTL numbers shoud be  
> read or written from right to left

This is not really accurate. Different arabic-script languages -- such as  
arabic and farsi -- read numerals ltr with some differences between them.  
But in classical arabic -- and I suspect classical persian as well --,  
numbers really _were_ read rtl. Where we say

One Hundred Twenty Three

in the old days they said

Three and Twenty and One Hundred.

Obviously this is consistent with rtl reading as well.

These matters are not so clear cut. Which is why, again, we have to  
distinguish sharply between engine and macro issues. Your concerns are --  
afaict -- macro implementation issues, not engine issues. And for these it  
is up to you or other programmers to use the lua extensions to write your  
own packages. If you don't like Arthur's or Hans' or someone else's  
implementation -- in lua -- of the issues that concern you, then that's  
not really a luatex issue per se. If it's LaTeX package, then talk to its  
author; if it's a ConTeXt issue, talk to Hans (and me if it involves  
Arabic-script).

It's very important to keep this distinction in mind, because we all have  
extremely limited and stretched-thin resources. So each of us needs to  
focus where it counts. I certainly don't want to see, eg, Taco bothered  
with non-engine issues at this point, because we have lots of other things  
to do.

:-)

Best wishes
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Shi`i Studies
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523