Numeric group separators and Bidi

Philippe Verdy via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Tue Jul 9 13:59:15 CDT 2019


Is there a narrow space usable as a numeric group separator, and that also
has the same bidi property as digits (i.e. neutral outside the span of
digits and separators, but inheriting the implied directionality of the
previous digit) ?

I can't find a way to use narrow spaces instead of punctuation signs (dot
or comma) for example in Arabic/Hebrew, for example to present tabular
numeric data in a really language-neutral way. In Arabic/Hebrew we need to
use punctuations as group separators because spaces don't work (not even
the narrow non-breaking space U+202F used in French and recommended in
ISO), but then these punctuation separators are interpreted differently
(notably between French and English where the interpretation dot and comma
are swapped)

Note that:
- the "figure space" is not suitable (as it has the same width as digits
and is used as a "filler" in tabular data; but it also does not have the
correct bidi behavior, as it does not have the same bidi properties as
digits).
- the "thin space" is not suitable (it is breakable)
- the "narrow non-breaking space" U+202F (used in French and currently in
ISO) is not suitable, or may be I'm wrong and its presence is still neutral
between groups of digits where it inherits the properties of the previous
digit, but still does not enforces the bidi direction of the whole span of
digits.

Can you point me if U+202F is really suitable ? I made some tests with
various text renderers, and some of them "break" the group of digits by
reordering these groups, changing completely the rendered value (units
become thousands or more, and thousands become units...). But may be these
are bugs in renderers.
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