Please describe the problem:
When I'm trying to write mail in Hebrew using the Evolution mail composing editor, simple text editing features - like visual cursor movement - do not work or work in strange and unpredictable ways.

As a result, writing mail in Hebrew using Evolution is an adventure that I'm reluctant to embark on, to the point that I sometimes start another mail client for the sole purpose of writing one email in Hebrew.

I will now details some of the more severe behaviors:

Steps to reproduce:
For all the items listed below, start with an empty composer window with the cursor at the start of the text area (I have an LTR signature at the bottom, and I assume it doesn't matter):

* write a sentence in Hebrew and at the end write a number. then try to select the entire sentence by pressing <Home> and then <Shift><End> - the sentence is selected, except the numbers.
* Write a few words in hebrew, then a number, then a few more words. Now try to use the right cursor key to back through the sentence - you can't move past the number: as soon as you reach the right side of the number, the cursor is wrapped to the the left side of it again. Use the mouse to position the cursor on one of the words to the right of the number and try to use the left cursor key to get to the number - once you reach the right side of the number the cursor wraps to the left side of it and more left clicks skip the number.
* Write a few words in Hebrew, then a few words in English, then a few more words in Hebrew. Now try the cursor movement test again: moving left through the sentence works like with the above example of numbers, but moving right behaves differently - once you reach the left side of the LTR text the cursor wraps to the end of the line and stays there despite repeated hits on the right cursor key.
* The same sentence as above ("RTL ltr RTL"), position the cursor on the right side RTL text and click <Home> - the cursor goes correctly to the right side. Pressing <End> the cursor goes correctly to the left side. Now position the cursor on the left side RTL text and click <Home> - both <Home> and <End> take the cursor to the left side.
* For some reason, not sure how related, with my current version when I try the above trick with numbers instead of LTR text (pressing <Home> when the cursor is on the left side of the sentence) Evolution just hangs and I have to kill it.
* Mouse selection is very confusing when trying to select text which contains RTL, LTR and numbers - specifically there's no way to select RTL text followed by an LTR text unless there is a space after the LTR text which you are willing to also get. There are also numerous other discrepancies between how mouse selection works in evo's composer vs. a text editor like gedit.
* If an RTL sentence starts with a non-directional character, such as period, asterisk or dash, the sentence automatically gets LTR directionality which messes it up. It also happens with numbers, so you can't write numbered or bulleted lists in Hebrew.
* If there's a line that starts with a number and followed by non-directional characters and RTL characters (for example - a hebrew numbered list), with the cursor positioned one line above its impossible to use the <Down> key to move to the numbered list - the cursor simply refuses to move. This does not happen when a line starts with non-directional or LTR characters.

All the above issues are in Evolution's mail composer only to the best of my knowledge. Specifically I verified that none of these problems occur in gedit. There is a problem with CTRL-<Right>/<Left> movement being reversed on RTL text which is also shared with gedit, but there is a different bug report for that.


Actual results:


Expected results:


Does this happen every time?


Other information:
There are several more confusing behaviors that I haven't yet detailed here that wreak havoc with BiDi editing in Evolution, especially when "wrongly LTR directional" lines (like discussed in the last entry) start to pop-up, which are more complex to setup as test cases but I can do that if there is interest.