[XeTeX] Formatting issues involving bidi

[nathan.sidoli at utoronto.ca]

I recently upgraded from TeX Live 2009 to 2010, and I have noticed a  
number of strange formatting issues that can be traced to the bidi  
package.

It is difficult to create a minimal example of some of these because  
they arise in documents that are quite long and developed, but I can  
describe them and produce a simple minimal example of one of the  
problems.

The first problem is that bidi seems to conflict with natbib.

Here is a minimal example:

---------------------------

documentclass{article}

\usepackage{natbib}
% Set the references punctuation to agree with HAMA
\bibpunct{[}{]}{;}{x}{}{,} % As in [Heiberg 1907, 34; Schmidt 1946, 68]
                            % Or Knorr [1984, 96]


%\usepackage{bidi}

\begin{document}

\begin{thebibliography}{00}


\bibitem[Acerbi(2007)]{ace_euc} Acerbi, F., 2007, Euclide, Tutte le  
opere, Bompiani, Milano.

\bibitem[Behboud(1994)]{beh_1994} Behboud, A., 1994, Greek Geometrical  
Analysis, Centaurus, 37, 52--86.

\bibitem[Berggren and Sidoli(2007)]{ber_sid_2007} Berggren, J.\ L.,  
Sidoli, N., 2007, Aristarchus?s  On the sizes and distances of the sun
and the moon: Greek and Arabic texts,  Archive for History of the  
Exact Sciences, 61, 213--254.

\bibitem[Berggren and Van Brummelen(2000)]{ber_van_2000} Berggren, J.\
   L., Van Brummelen, G., 2000, The role and development of
   geometric analysis and synthesis in ancient Greece and medieval
   Islam. In: Suppes, P., Moravcsik, J.\ M.,  Mendell, H.\ (eds.),
    Ancient \& Medieval Traditions in the Exact Sciences: Essays
     in Memory of Wilbur Knorr, CSLI Publications, Stanford, pp.\ 1--31.

\end{thebibliography}

-----------------------

If we toggle bidi on and off, we notice that the lines following the  
first line of the references switch back and forth from being indented  
to being flush with the first line. Just by changing loading bidi. I  
don't think this should be happening, but I don't know which package  
is at fault.

The other issues are more involved and I cannot describe them all, but  
I am writing a book for Springer, using the Springer style files  
(http://www.springer.com/authors/book+authors?SGWID=0-154102-12-417900-0),  
when I toggle bidi on and off, I get all kinds of formatting changes:  
the titles of the chapters move around, the headings appear and  
disappear, special notes that are used as floaters disappear, etc. So,  
somehow bidi seems to be conflicting with the svmult and svmono style  
files.

Has anyone run into similar type problems? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thansk,

Nathan