Subject: Thoughts about a real hebrew support in menus

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 00:44:26 +0300 (IDT)

The following supposes SubmenusLeft is only affects submenu placements (as
its name says), not the original menu layout.

With the new menu code it is easy to create hebrew-like menus.
Actually, to have a real hebrew/arabic support, there must be an additional
format subdirective, say "!", added to label directives: %!l, %!r, %!c,
which reverts characters in labels. So "Salam" and %!r gives: "   malaS".
Or it is, probably, better yet instead of this subdirective to have
MenuStyle options NormalLabels (default) and ReverseLabels.

And in addition, there must be MenuStyle options, say, DrawFromLeft
(default) and DrawFromRight (which physically reverts the order and all %r
to %l, %< to %>, %5.3 to %3.5). For example, if in an item format there is
only one label, one icon, one side picture and so on, the following:
  ---------
  MenuStyle * DrawFromRight, ItemFormat "%.4s%.1[%.5i%.5l%2.3>%1]"
  ---------
can be already emulated by the:
  ---------
  MenuStyle * ItemFormat "%.1[%3.2<%.5i%.5r%1]%4s"
  ---------
But if there is more than one element of the same type (like labels),
currently there is no equivalent to DrawFromRight. I think DrawFromRight
must not imply ReverseLabels. This is also because there are 2 ways of
storing hebrew labels: "Israel" (logical) and "learsI" (visual).

When these 2 options are added, the following defines the real hebrew menus:
  MenuStyle * DrawFromRight, ReverseLabels, SubmenusLeft
(ItemFormat remains the same as in latin menus!)
Note, DrawFromRight doesn't make format directives %< and others obsolete,
they can be used to have more pover over menus (having right triangle and
SubmenusLeft is ok if user wants this).

I hope all this does not confuse you too much.

Regards,
Mikhael.

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---

From: Matthias Clasen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 23:59:52 +0200

> MenuStyle options NormalLabels (default) and ReverseLabels.

Shouldn't this be handled by I18N in  a cleaner way ? I think R6 output
methods also support complicated things like right-to-left vs left-to-right
and context-dependent drawing ?

-- 
Matthias Clasen, 
Tel. 0761/203-5606
Email: [email-masked]
Mathematisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg
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