[XeTeX] xetex and the unicode bidirectional algorithm.

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 08:36:53AM +1100, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> More to the point which libraries is XeTeX using for Bidi support me how
> up-to-date are they?

The issue is not the libraries (we use ICU which implemented the latest
BiDi algorithm changes in its last release), but the fact that XeTeX
does not use it in a way that applies BiDi algorithm to the paragraph as
a whole. It can be done, I have done it in LuaTeX using Lua code and the
hooks LuaTeX provides to the internal of TeX, but doing it by modifying
(Xe)TeX’s WEB code is not for the faint of the heart (AKA me, the last
time I dared to do something like that, people kept hitting bugs for the
third year in row).

Regards,
Khaled