I have no idea why this is in the html spec. I'm sure there's a very good reason for the bdo tag to exist, though.

You can use bdo to reverse text direction. I have no idea why this is in the html spec. I'm sure there's a very good reason, though.

Now I know what you're thinking... bdo is for languages that go right to left instead of left to right. I guess that's true... but are right to left languages really input or stored left to right then reversed for display? (The answer may surprise you.)