Subject: bug#9571: 24.0.50; user option to turn off bidi, please

From: Juanma Barranquero <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:21:02 +0200

2011/9/23 Štěpán Němec <[email-masked]>:

> I assume you don't consider UI responsiveness (buffer movement etc.)
> deterioration a bug, then? AFIAK it's totally unrealistic to expect the
> same responsiveness from Emacs with bidi enabled as from one with bidi
> disabled, just as is the case with font locking. Given that font locking
> already makes Emacs (next-to-?)unusable under certain circumstances, I'm
> not sure easily discoverable and advertised possibility to switch bidi
> off is such a very strange request from someone who never, ever, works
> with bidi text (intentionally or not, i.e., doesn't even receive bidi
> emails or something).

OOH, there was a time when suggesting that the user adds something to
.emacs, like

  (setq-default bidi-display-reordering nil)

was not considered obscure. Not everything must go through the
customization interface.

OTOH, you could equally argue that the new font backend stuff from the
Unicode merge slows Emacs for people who only ever edits ASCII, and
that disabling these backends should be an "easily disoverable and
advertised posibility". But currently the only way to disable a
specific font backend is via (initial|default)-frame-alist, and no one
has complained yet.

    Juanma