@Elliot Kirk thanks for your reply.
Are you referencing right to left languages
well, yes and no...
I am referring to bidirectional text i.e. text which is partly RTL and in part LTR.
If, for example, we have the following text:
abc ZYXW
First word - abc - being LTR, and second word - WXYZ - being RTL, (I am following the convention in the Unicode spec of representing RTL text using uppercase). The logical order of the characters differs from the visual order. Logically, we have:
abc WXYZ
however seeing as the second word is displayed in a right to left direction we have the visual order of:
abc ZYXW
When the cursor is situated in the RTL area - as so:
abc ZY|XW
there are 2 methods of translating a right key press. One can move the cursor visually to the right as so:
abc ZYX|W
which will actually be moving it to the previous character instead of the next character (in the logical ordering). Alternatively, we can always move to the next character in the logical sequence, meaning that a right key press will in reality move the cursor to the left, resulting in this:
abc Z|YXW
The consensus in most software, and this is Windows' behavior, is to follow the logical ordering, meaning a right key press will move the cursor to the left.
You can test this by using the following bidi string:
abc אבגד
paste it into notepad and observe the behavior when browsing with the cursor.
Current versions of Chrome however use the visual ordering - meaning that a right key press will move the cursor to the right. This is a departure from the norm in most software, and personally I find it confusing.
This can be tested by pasting the above string into a chrome input box and moving the cursor through the string.
I noticed (to my pleasure) that the new Edge follows the logical ordering. I am interested in knowing if this change was introduced by the chromium team, and will arrive in a future version of chrome. Or is this a design decision of the Edge team and if so where can I read more about this?
Thanks.
