Except e.g. in Hebrew, you almost certainly have bidirectional text. E.g. numbers in a text still follow LTR. So if you press backspace, you don't always want t

Except e.g. in Hebrew, you almost certainly have bidirectional text. E.g. numbers in a text still follow LTR. So if you press backspace, you don't always want to delete the text to the right. Now add to that the fact that nobody wants to build a new editor for every single language, and there you go - all of that gets rolled into a common approach. It's hard to impossible to get right. (Because what you want also depends on context, not just language - URLs demand different behaviors with BiDi than text does) Even if we wanted to build different editors, as soon as you start quoting things not from your preferred environment, guess what, you have mixed environments and need to start thinking about BiDi It's a gargantuan mess. Nobody is really getting it right, we're just trying to get closer and closer. (And if you want to see folks in the field pulling out their hair, mention you'd like Boustrophedon writing ;) Source: UAX 9 and UAX 29 were printouts on my desk for several years, for very good reasons. I still have unsolved problems with BiDi text, I've just given up.