When I change the keyboard on my computer to the Arabic language, the characters I type show up correctly in Word. What I don't understand is why the arrow keys move the caret to the opposing direction.



I know the Arabic language has the right to left direction, but this does not justify the apparent incorrect behavior of the arrow keys.

Suppose you're using the font Arial, which has Arabic characters. Let's also suppose you have typed the letters 'a' and 'b' in a Word document, as below :

ab

Now, if you insert any Arabic character, from the Insert Symbols dialog, in between the letters 'a' and 'b', you'll get different caret positions depending on the way you clicked in between the letters 'a' and 'b'.

1) If you click with the mouse between 'a' and 'b', in a way that is closer to the center of 'a', and then insert the Arabic character, the caret will be positioned at the left of the Arab character.

2) If you click closer to the center of 'b', the caret will be positioned at the right of the Arab character.

Can someone explain me what is the logic behind this ? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Consider the following bidirectional text in MS Word 2010, where the caret was positioned with a mouse click right at the left of the Hebrew letter dalet.

See first image

If I then press Delete, the caret moves to its new position :

See second image

As far as I can understand the caret should not move in this case. Any explanation ?

Attached Images

	Bidi_After.png (1.6 KB, 14 views)
	BIDI_Before.png (1.6 KB, 14 views)

Cross-posted at: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/For...9-e6eb64fc18e6
For cross-posting etiquette, please read: http://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?184

PS: Three threads on essentially the same topic merged.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

On the third thread above replace "See first image" with See second image, and replace "See second image" with See first image.