python-bidi 0.5 released

When I’ve set out to write python-bidi, I had 3 goals in mind:

  • Learn the Unicode BiDi layout algorithm.
  • Simplfy package installation: pyfribidi required installing fribidi, which does not lend itself nicely into virtualenvs on different platforms.
  • License, as pyfribidi was GPL 2.0.

While those goals were achieved, implementing version 5 of the algorithm was not perfect - there were some bugs with special chars. I’ve lost interest and moved on.

Redoing it with Rust as a learning experience seemed like a good idea. However I’ve found the great unicode-bidi crate from the Servo project, which parts of it were incorporated into Firefox.

That crate, wheels, PyO3 and GitHub actions seemed like the perfect comobo for the future path of python-bidi.

After much procrastination, python-bidi 0.5 was released. Note the following breaking changes:

  • Dropped Python < 3.9 support.
  • Removed upper_is_rtl params.
  • Import of get_display changed: from bidi import get_display.

I’m off to close all those bugs.

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