kovidgoyal/kitty

BiDirectional text support

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#2,109 opened on Nov 1, 2019

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 (16 comments) (24 reactions) (0 assignees)Python (887 forks)batch import
enhancementhelp wanted

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Description

In the modern world, the support for some languages that are right-to-left and mixing them with left-to-write words and numbers is crucial for a different software. At some point, this should be supported everywhere, including the console.

I started to gather the information about BiDi support in various console terminals (and programs) in analogy with true color crusade at https://gist.github.com/XVilka/a0e49e1c65370ba11c17

New console BiDi specification was recently implemented in libvte by @egmontkob: https://terminal-wg.pages.freedesktop.org/bidi/implementations.html#vte

Note, that with the release of GNOME 3.34 the support of BiDi is available in Gnome Terminal out of the box, which makes testing/implementing it in the other programs, such as kitty way easier.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study the BiDi specification and examine how GNOME Terminal implemented BiDi support in libvte. Then review kitty's text rendering code to understand where to integrate.
Tech stack
python
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
4
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
Git
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30