Re: A draft for a multibyte and multi-codepoint C string interface

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> If the so-called arabic digits were the exact same glyphes in arabic
> and in western languages (I doubt this is actually the case),

If you mean, are the same glyphs used to render numbers when writing in
Arabic as we use in `Western' languages, no, they're not.  I've seen
written Arabic involving numbers often enough to kinda-sorta-vaguely
recognize them, and they look almost nothing like the digits I'm used
to in languages like English; the major similarity is that it's a
base-ten positional notation.

> using in all these languages the ASCII codepoints will make
> impossible to deduce automatically the direction of rendering;

I don't see that as any more of a problem than it is that it's
impossible to deduce the language upon seeing the word "pain" (which,
for the benefit those of you not as francophone as I feel sure tlaronde
is, is a perfectly good word in French as well as in English).

> [...] if I'm not mistaken, a number looks the "same" in arabic,
> because they are written left-to-right, that is, least significant
> digit first considered from right-to-left).

I don't recall which order the digits are written in, and I don't have
any Arabic text with numbers in it at ready hand to check.  Surely
someone here is competent in Arabic...?

/~\ The ASCII                             Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML                mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost
/ \ Email!           7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B