GSoC Idea: Write a ctext-like Megawidget for right-to-left writing and display

Write a ctext-like Megawidget for right-to-left writing and display

Areas GUI, Megawidget
Good if student knows Tk
Priority Low
Difficulty Medium to Hard
Benefits to the student ???
Benefits to the Tcl Community Enhanced i18n, l10n for Tk
Mentor ???

Project Description

This idea is born out of an offhand chatroom comment in response to someone looking for an Arabic/Hebrew text widget doing right-to-left

10:27 tclguy  you could make a ctext-like megawidget that would support rtl ... that might be interesting

We currently have bits and pieces for this, see the references below, but nothing nice and integrated.

References

Comments & Discussion

You must consider two things: (i) Tk on Windows already displays rtl languages correctly, although text selection is interesting; (ii) if a user sees text, he/she may well want to copy and paste.

The implication of No. 2 above is that presentation of character strings in the wrong order, so that they appear correct when displayed, will not allow copy and paste: the text will appear backwards in an application that fully understands rtl languages such as LibreOffice Writer.