You complain about ASCII filenames but a few of the examples are obviously Unicode, namely using emoji, well outside of the ASCII character set. But since you’ve brought up Unicode file names, let me introduce you to bidirectional text!
If you use Hebrew or Arabic, some of your directories or files will have right-to-left text in them. This is a recipe for disaster.
If in English you’d have “C:\Users\Adam\Documents\Research\Paper.pdf”, which breaks down to:
C:\
Users\
Adam\
Documents\
Research\
Paper.pdf
In Hebrew you’d have: “C:\משתמשים\אדם\מסמכים\מחקר\מאמר.pdf”, which breaks down to:
C:\
משתמשים\
אדם\
מסמכים\
מחקר\
מאמר.pdf
The entire path goes backwards, and the “.pdf” extension is visually attached to the “Users” folder if the text is rendered naively. It’s insane. Fortunately many GUI shells nowadays separate each path item so they can’t get intermixed like this. Example:
But still, if you copy a path into plaintext, it will still visually look wrong, and there is literally nothing that anyone can do about it. This is the correct way to render this text.
Exact same issues occur in Arabic and the few other RTL languages usedin the world. It’s a massive pain.
Edit: oh, and on commandline on Windows, the required characters aren’t even available by default so you get this lovely thing
I’m not sure, as I’ve never used them. But I imagine this is a lot more straightforward.
The problem with bidirectional text is that it’s bi-directional. Parts of it are RTL and parts are LTR. The main problem is how to order the characters visually, assuming that they are stored in memory in the order in which they are intended to be read.
For text that goes in only one direction this is trivial. LTR: characters are arranged from left to right. RTL: characters are arranged from right to left. Easy peasy!
The problem, as I’ve said, is when you have a sentence or paragraph with both LTR and RTL text inside it. Then the algorithm is needed.
To my knowledge, there is no bottom-to-top language, and certainly not one that would be mixed in within top-to-bottom text or vice versa. So an algorithm isn’t necessary: if TTB (top-to-bottom) is used, characters simply need to be arranged top to bottom.
To add on to this, I believe TTB text is only used explicitly. By default, all text is rendered horizontally (usually LTR) unless you explicitly set the software to render it top-to-bottom. So if you just have plain text in Japanese or whatever language with no additional markup, it will be rendered horizontally and subject to the UBA.
There are a lot of top-to-bottom languages in Asia. Some chinese languages for example are traditionally written top to bottom.
Bidirectional text only really occurs when mixing languages, like in the example above where RTL Hebrew is mixed with LTR English (or in this case specifically LTR file paths that have originally been created in the context of an LTR language and thus are LTR).
If there was actual TTB language support in Windows Explorer, and you had a file path incorporating both TTB file names and LTR file endings and drive letters, then you’d also have the same issue with mixing LTR and RTL, only that you are now mixing writing directions in two dimensions.
But I’m guessing even though Unicode’s stated goal is to encode all writing, TTB is probably where they drew the line.
this meme was fueled by sleep deprivation, alcohol, and caffeine. any views implied or expressed are not to be taken seriously and may result in side effects such as nausea and vomiting
The way this should work is it’s set as either left-to-right or right-to-left. (C:)/1/2/3.ext or ext.3/2/1/(:C). It shouldn’t render part of it one direction and part of it the other direction logically. It’s probably impossible to fix at this point, but this makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, that is pretty much how it works in some GUIs like in the screenshot, where each slash is replaced by >. But if you represent the path in a string, and put that string in some context that doesn’t know it’s a path and that it should be rendered by some special rules, then it’ll just be subject to the usual Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA).
The UBA is a masterpiece, and I’m not being sarcastic. For everyday text with mixed directionality, such as a WhatsApp chat in Arabic/Hebrew with a bit of English or just some numbers mixed in, the UBA’s default output is the ideal way to order the characters.
The problem is, special cases (such as file paths) just can’t be covered by a universal algorithm. You can insert special characters into the path, namely FSI and PDI (“First Strong directional Isolate” and “Pop Directional Isolate”) to make the text render the way you want under the UBA… But then, when you copy that path, the special characters would still be there so software would consider them part of the path, and then of course, File Not Found.
You complain about ASCII filenames but a few of the examples are obviously Unicode, namely using emoji, well outside of the ASCII character set. But since you’ve brought up Unicode file names, let me introduce you to bidirectional text!
If you use Hebrew or Arabic, some of your directories or files will have right-to-left text in them. This is a recipe for disaster.
If in English you’d have “C:\Users\Adam\Documents\Research\Paper.pdf”, which breaks down to:
In Hebrew you’d have: “C:\משתמשים\אדם\מסמכים\מחקר\מאמר.pdf”, which breaks down to:
The entire path goes backwards, and the “.pdf” extension is visually attached to the “Users” folder if the text is rendered naively. It’s insane. Fortunately many GUI shells nowadays separate each path item so they can’t get intermixed like this. Example:
But still, if you copy a path into plaintext, it will still visually look wrong, and there is literally nothing that anyone can do about it. This is the correct way to render this text.
Exact same issues occur in Arabic and the few other RTL languages usedin the world. It’s a massive pain.
Edit: oh, and on commandline on Windows, the required characters aren’t even available by default so you get this lovely thing
How would it look if you intermingled Hebrew and English in the path? E.g. C:\English\Hebrew\Hebrew\English\Hebrew
Crazy… Btw, how does this work for top-to-bottom languages?
I’m not sure, as I’ve never used them. But I imagine this is a lot more straightforward.
The problem with bidirectional text is that it’s bi-directional. Parts of it are RTL and parts are LTR. The main problem is how to order the characters visually, assuming that they are stored in memory in the order in which they are intended to be read.
For text that goes in only one direction this is trivial. LTR: characters are arranged from left to right. RTL: characters are arranged from right to left. Easy peasy!
The problem, as I’ve said, is when you have a sentence or paragraph with both LTR and RTL text inside it. Then the algorithm is needed.
To my knowledge, there is no bottom-to-top language, and certainly not one that would be mixed in within top-to-bottom text or vice versa. So an algorithm isn’t necessary: if TTB (top-to-bottom) is used, characters simply need to be arranged top to bottom.
To add on to this, I believe TTB text is only used explicitly. By default, all text is rendered horizontally (usually LTR) unless you explicitly set the software to render it top-to-bottom. So if you just have plain text in Japanese or whatever language with no additional markup, it will be rendered horizontally and subject to the UBA.
There are a lot of top-to-bottom languages in Asia. Some chinese languages for example are traditionally written top to bottom.
Bidirectional text only really occurs when mixing languages, like in the example above where RTL Hebrew is mixed with LTR English (or in this case specifically LTR file paths that have originally been created in the context of an LTR language and thus are LTR).
If there was actual TTB language support in Windows Explorer, and you had a file path incorporating both TTB file names and LTR file endings and drive letters, then you’d also have the same issue with mixing LTR and RTL, only that you are now mixing writing directions in two dimensions.
But I’m guessing even though Unicode’s stated goal is to encode all writing, TTB is probably where they drew the line.
They usually have a ltr or rtl version of it.
Makes sense. Can’t imagine a lot of software supports top-to-bottom.
Does Unicode even support that?
Why not use
ꟻbq.משתמשים/אדם/מסמכים/מחקר/מאמר/:ↄ
instead? If you want to write from right to left, you should go all the way.
You maniac!
Daaammn youuuuuu! Damn you all to hellllll! *sobs*
Make it vertical? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Excuse me, officer- this guy right here
this meme was fueled by sleep deprivation, alcohol, and caffeine. any views implied or expressed are not to be taken seriously and may result in side effects such as nausea and vomiting
The way this should work is it’s set as either left-to-right or right-to-left. (C:)/1/2/3.ext or ext.3/2/1/(:C). It shouldn’t render part of it one direction and part of it the other direction logically. It’s probably impossible to fix at this point, but this makes a lot more sense.
(:-C) boah or (C:) nose?
Yeah, that is pretty much how it works in some GUIs like in the screenshot, where each slash is replaced by
>. But if you represent the path in a string, and put that string in some context that doesn’t know it’s a path and that it should be rendered by some special rules, then it’ll just be subject to the usual Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA).The UBA is a masterpiece, and I’m not being sarcastic. For everyday text with mixed directionality, such as a WhatsApp chat in Arabic/Hebrew with a bit of English or just some numbers mixed in, the UBA’s default output is the ideal way to order the characters.
The problem is, special cases (such as file paths) just can’t be covered by a universal algorithm. You can insert special characters into the path, namely FSI and PDI (“First Strong directional Isolate” and “Pop Directional Isolate”) to make the text render the way you want under the UBA… But then, when you copy that path, the special characters would still be there so software would consider them part of the path, and then of course, File Not Found.
I was already interested based on your first comment but this:
has thoroughly piqued my interest. Thank you for being an opinionated nerd on the internet.