Hi Wendell, Probably it would be handy for users to see better those special Unicode BIDI characters used to force direction. I will add an improvement request for this. But it is advisable that users should rely more on markup than on these characters. About this remark:

BTW, it looks to me as though oXygen automatically inserts the Unicode controls when I insert characters from the Hebrew Unicode block. Is this correct? Will it happen even when I'm in a place already configured (using CSS on an element) that right-to-left is the direction?

Actually Oxygen does not automatically insert BIDI control characters while the user is typing, the user needs to insert them manually. Oxygen uses the Unicode BIDI algorithm which senses correctly places where the flow of characters changes orientation just by looking at their character range. Those BIDI control characters are useful when you want to force that behavior one way or the other, when the default algorithm does not properly arrange the flow of text the way you want it to be read. Regards, Radu Radu Coravu <oXygen/> XML Editor, Schema Editor and XSLT Editor/Debugger http://www.oxygenxml.com On 10/29/2013 6:40 PM, Wendell Piez wrote:

Hi,

I am helping a user set up oXygen Author for use with Hebrew, in which I am regrettably illiterate. (But I know something about oXygen and CSS.) These documents are not entirely or primarily Hebrew; they only have occasional bits of Hebrew in paragraph or mixed content.

The support for bidirectional text in oXygen is getting really impressive. But I have one request that I don't know how to address, and don't know if it's possible. The users would like to be able to see the locations of the Unicode control characters for right-to-left, left-to-right, and 'pop', if not actually to color the text between them.

Since CSS doesn't support character-level controls (tmk) I don't believe this can be done. Am I right?

If I am, does anyone have ideas for possible approaches or workarounds?

My user is aware that (a) in bidirectional mode, oXygen indicates with its cursor when there is a change in direction, and (b) that more functionality is possible if his users are willing to use XML markup and not only the Unicode control characters.

BTW, it looks to me as though oXygen automatically inserts the Unicode controls when I insert characters from the Hebrew Unicode block. Is this correct? Will it happen even when I'm in a place already configured (using CSS on an element) that right-to-left is the direction?

Thanks! Wendell

Wendell Piez | http://www.wendellpiez.com XML | XSLT | electronic publishing Eat Your Vegetables _____oo_________o_o___ooooo____ooooooo_^ _______________________________________________ oXygen-user mailing list oXygen-user@oxygenxml.com http://www.oxygenxml.com/mailman/listinfo/oxygen-user