Plain text (from Re: Avoidance variants)

[Leo Broukhis]

Exact semantics of formatting characters aside, it is best to define plain
text as a stateless stream. The characters you're proposing require a
decoder to keep state, therefore they won't do. <TIC>At most you may ask for
*U+E1001 COMBINING ITALICIZER
*U+E1003 COMBINING BOLDIFIER
after all, we already have U+0332 COMBINING LOW LINE and U+0336 COMBINING
LONG STROKE OVERLAY for <u> and <s> resp, thus adding their counterparts
for <i> and <b> will merely complete the set. </TIC>

Leo


On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 8:18 AM, William_J_G Overington <
wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> > Blocks of boring plain text, no italics or effects any more complex than
> justification, simple notes written all in one font with no formatting to
> speak of etc.
>
>
> I am wondering if it is considered a good idea to define into Plane 14
> some formatting characters, so that plain text could in the future contain
> italics and so on.
>
>
> For example, written here with an asterisk included as I seem to remember
> that that is the convention so as to avoid a suggested new character being
> mistaken as an existing character, how about the following.
>
>
> *U+E1000 FORMAT NOT ITALICS
>
>
> *U+E1001 FORMAT ITALICS
>
>
> *U+E1002 FORMAT NOT BOLD
>
>
> *U+E1003 FORMAT BOLD
>
>
> Traditionally such a suggestion would be refuted as out of scope for plain
> text: use of markup would be suggested.
>
>
> Yet that was then, this is now: ideas of what can, or should, be encoded
> in plain text have changed with time and could usefully continue to change
> where that is of use to consumers.
>
>
> I have often wondered why use of markup is regarded as such a requirement
> when the capabilities of plain text could so easily be enhanced.  Expanding
> the capabilities of plain text would increase interoperability.
>
>
> William Overington
>
>
> 26 March 2015
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Unicode mailing list
> Unicode at unicode.org
> http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/attachments/20150326/e7ec2b46/attachment.html>