[XeTeX] xetex and the unicode bidirectional algorithm.

[Khaled Hosny]

On Tue, Dec 03, 2013 at 01:42:21PM -0500, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> Does XeLaTeX implement the Unicode BiDi algorithm?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: XeTeX, more or less, breaks words at spaces or other
non-character material (spaces in TeX are converted to the so called
glue, so are not handled as characters) and applies the Unicode BiDi
algorithm to each word separately, which effectively means it is just
used to determine the direction of the individual word.

> If so, why isn't it working (I can provide a TeX sample)?  If not,
> does anyone have any suggestions for workarounds -- other than
> implementing the BiDi algorithm myself and adding explicit \RL and \LR
> commands?

I think sample documents (minimal working example) are needed for any
useful suggestion.

Regards,
Khaled