Two questions about Arabic and right-to-left text

[vefatica]

I Google for "hello Arabic". I get the usual translation dialog and press the "copy" button.

I paste to a TCC command line in WT ...

Two questions:
CHARMAP doesn't show any Arabic characters for my font (Consolas). Where are they coming from?

If I backspace, those pasted characters are deleted from the left end! Who (what software) knows (and how) that it's right-to-left?

[DHowett]

Terminal implements font fallback (using DirectWrite); those characters are pulled from somewhere (but we do not surface the source anywhere.)

That RTL script is rendered properly (RTL) is an artifact of our renderer, and cannot be relied-upon or trusted until #538 lands. 😄

[DHowett]

That artifact is "we give DirectWrite runs of glyphs that are all the same color; it calculates how to render them itself". It's lucky that it works out as well as it does sometimes.

[vefatica]

Thanks!

we do not surface the source

Can't ... won't?

[DHowett]

Don't see the need to, don't have a place to do it, don't think anyone cares. 😄

We're not a word processor. You can't just put your cursor on something and ask what font it came out in. There's no additional side channel for us to express that info with, either.

Oh, open a debug tap, "we rendered the glyph at 6, 7 using NSimSun instead of Consolas". Okay, who's going to use that information and for what purpose? 😄

[vefatica]

Just curious about how things work.

[mdtauk]

Just a curiosity of mine. For Right to Left, how is the command prompt handled?

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[DHowett]

how.. handled

It's not. It's not handled. Definitely move this discussion over to #538 if you'd like to talk RTL details.