Re: bidi scripts and languages // writing numbers

Nicholas Bodley scripsit:

> Recent messages have discussed which digit is written first, but
> it seems to me that as those messages were worded, there was an
> implicit LTR assumption that the leftmost digit is "first".

At least some postings were careful to say MSDF (most significant digit
first) or LSDF (least ...).

> We technical people need to be careful to be aware of situations
> in which numbers (usually binary or hexadecimal) might have their
> most-significant digit on the right, instead of the left, as
> perceived by humans. One way this has spilled over into Unicode is
> byte ordering.

AFAIK there is no positional numeral system, except Elvish, where the
most significant digit stands on the right. (Non-positional notation in
RTL script may tend to do so.)

> "Osmosis was not a god of Ancient Egypt." -- Michael Goldfarb

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--Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque"

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John Cowan jcowan@... www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
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