Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 March 29

= March 29 =

U202E
Aside from trolling and malware, what purpose does This character: "&#x202e;" serve? If the Unicode Consortium had an ounce of common sense, they would retire this character as it is utterly pointless. Someone who&#39;s wrong on the internet (talk) 17:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Assume you mean the Unicode character 202E it's a right-to-left override character. As to why it mirrors the text I have no clue. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:48, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. Someone who&#39;s wrong on the internet (talk) 21:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Suppose that I am writing a paper. In that paper in English. The text flow is left to right. In that text, I want to display text from another language that is supposed to be right to left (there are multiple examples of this). I could incorrectly display it left to right, but I should override the document's flow direction for that text block and then set it back to left to right when that example text is complete. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 20:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Flip! Well that's what I'd like it to do but it doesn't. I would really like it if emojis could be turned to face the other direction - but unfortunately it just reverses the order in which characters are output. Then for instance I could have these 💃🕺 dancers face each other or these 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ runners run to each other :-) NadVolum (talk) 20:51, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So it enables malware and doesn't even do what it's supposed to? Someone who&#39;s wrong on the internet (talk) 21:11, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is an example of the intended use. Suppose you want to include some Hebrew text in an English passage. Specifically, you want to write "Shalóm!" using the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew is written right-to-left. The world "shalóm" is written with four letters: shin ש, lamed ל, vav ו, mem ם. If you enter these characters followed by an exclamation mark, you get this:
 * To greet someone in Hebrew, just say "שלום!" (Shalóm!).
 * This is wrong. While the renderer correctly renders the four Hebrew letters in the right-to-left direction, the exclamation mark is not recognized as being part of the Hebrew text and is put (for a reader of Hebrew) in front of the interjection, instead of at the end – that is, all the way to the left. To fix this, enclose the whole part that should be rendered right-to-left between the Unicode characters U+202E and U+202C, the latter of which restores the previous order, thus: "&amp;#x202e;שלום!&amp;#x202c;", resulting in
 * To greet someone in Hebrew, just say "&#x202e;שלום!&#x202c;" (Shalóm!).
 * --Lambiam 05:18, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "doesn't even do what it's supposed to": It is supposed to flow text right to left. It is not supposed to flip characters. For example, if you have "hello", it changes it to "olleh". It does not flip the characters around. So, it does what it is supposed to do. It does not do what you apparently want it to do, which is not in any way what it is supposed to do. As for enabling malware, humans are the main enabler for malware. A Unicode character is not the main cause of malware. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:03, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * but isn't that exactly what it's doing? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 11:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No. Flipping directionality is not the same as flipping the character itself. Say you have 4 cars setup in a line: 1, 2, 3 and 4 facing west. You can change their directionality (their order within the group) by positioning them as 4, 3, 2, 1 facing west. The cars are in the same order but a different position (you start counting form a different side) and the cars preserved their own direction. Flipping the cars however will maintain their position (1, 2, 3, 4) and causes them to be either on their roofs (flipped around the horizontal axis), or to face east (flipped around the vertical axis) instead of west. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:23, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Another example that I hope makes sense. It is supposed to change text flow direction. All of the examples above show this. 12345 becomes 54321. It does not flip characters. . ◁ does not become ▷. ← does not become →. So, if you have <◁←, it is supposed to change the text flow to ←◁<. It does not flip the characters to >▷→ or do both to create →▷>. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 12:30, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh ok. That makes sense now. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:42, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You can have the glyphs in other positions by using Cascading Style Sheets. MediaWiki wiki markup has templates that help such as Template:transform-rotate, Template:MirrorH, template:MirrorV: 💃🕺 🏃‍♀️🏃‍ . Before you get wild with them, consider how they will render in screen reader and similar assistive technologies. --Error (talk) 18:21, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Apart from trolling and malware, what purpose do any characters other than those in US-ASCII serve? Those savages should just speak American if they want to use computers. This response should be read tongue firmly planted in cheek (maybe we should have a character for that). --47.155.46.15 (talk) 08:26, 4 April 2023 (UTC)