Name: jh34982 Date: 10/26/99



The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm is is currently implemented in two
places, sun.awt.font and in javax.swing.text. There should be one
public implementation in java.text. Swing wants to use a public API
to get this information, and the duplication of code is undesirable.

The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm analyzes text using the Unicode
character properties, and determines the direction of runs of the
text. This is necessary to properly display Hebrew and Arabic text in
the correct order.

The current implementation is all Java, but it would be useful to have
efficient access from the native font code so that Hebrew and Arabic text
can be more efficiently rendered. We would use a native implementation
and provide Java access through JNI. We have a C++ implementation
available.

The java.lang.Character class does not provide access to a character's
bidirectional property. As Character is the interface for all Unicode
character information, it should be extended to add access to this
information for Java clients. This is requested in bug 4132045.

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