Bidirectional Text Control
Unicode supports standard bidirectional text without any special characters. In other words Unicode conforming software should display right-to-left characters such as Hebrew letters as right-to-left simply from the properties of those characters. Similarly, Unicode handles the mixture of left-to-right-text alongside right-to-left text without any special characters. For example, one can quote Arabic (“بسم الله”) (translated into English as "Bismillah") right alongside English and the Arabic letters will flow from right-to-left and the Latin letters left-to-right. However, support for bidirectional text becomes more complicated when text flowing in opposite directions is embedded hierarchically, for example if one quotes an Arabic phrase that in turn quotes an English phrase. Other situations may also complicate this, such as when an author wants the left-to-right characters overridden so that they flow from right-to-left. While these situations are fairly rare, Unicode provides seven characters (U+200E, U+200F, U+202A, U+202B, U+202C, U+202D, U+202E) to help control these embedded bidirectional text levels up to 61 levels deep.
Read more about this topic: Unicode Control Characters
Famous quotes containing the words text and/or control:
“If ever I should condescend to prose,
I’ll write poetical commandments, which
Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
That went before; in these I shall enrich
My text with many things that no one knows,
And carry precept to the highest pitch:
I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The inability to control our children’s behavior feels the same as not being able to control it in ourselves. And the fact is that primitive behavior in children does unleash primitive behavior in mothers. That’s what frightens mothers most. For young children, even when out of control, do not have the power to destroy their mothers, but mothers who are out of control feel that they may destroy their children.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)