More on cursor support: in Bidi, intuition can be a four letter word

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/01/09 03:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/01/09/510654.aspx


It was just over a week ago that I posted more about cursor movement.

In the comments, a protracted discussion about Bidi support on Windows and whether the support for cursor movement and selection was "intuitive".

If you ask me, intuition is a four letter word when it comes to this situation. Because when you are talking about a language where not all of the text has to flow in the same direction, the "proper expectation" of the average user is certainly open to some interpretation.

So I thought it might be fun to try out a little problem and see how everyone fares.

The idea is to try to construct a string, up to 25 characters in length, that allows Notepad to show a selection that has five or more non-contigous selected pieces. And then of course explain how to do the selection....

Since Notepad does not have multiselect, this is obviously not possible unless you have specially constructed a string with RTL, LTR, and/or neutral text.

The only rule if you want to play is that you cannot use directional characters like the directional markers -- you have to use regular, visible text.

I will moderate all comments so no one can give away the answer, and I'll talk about the answer and the general issues with selection and cursor movement later on in the day.

Ready, set, go! :-)

 

This post brought to you by U+200f, a.k.a. RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK


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referenced by

2006/01/10 More on cursor support: the rest of the answer

2006/01/09 More on cursor support: half of the answer!

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