Encoding italic

Kent Karlsson via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Sat Feb 9 05:50:59 CST 2019


Den 2019-02-08 21:53, skrev "Doug Ewell via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org>:

> I'd like to propose encoding italics and similar display attributes in
> plain text using the following stateful mechanism:

Note that these do NOT nest (no stack...), just state changes for the
relevant PART of the "graphic" (i.e. style) state. So the approach in
that regard is quite different from the approach done in HTML/CSS.

> € Italics on: ESC [3m
> € Italics off: ESC [23m
> € Bold on: ESC [1m
> € Bold off: ESC [22m
> € Underline on: ESC [4m
    (implies turning double underline off)

   Underline, double: ESC [21m
    (implies turning single underline off)

> € Underline off: ESC [24m
> € Strikethrough on: ESC [9m
> € Strikethrough off: ESC [29m
> € Reverse on: ESC [7m
> € Reverse off: ESC [27m

"Reverse" = "switch background and foreground colours".

This is an (odd) colour thing. If you want to go with (full!) colour
(foreground and background), fine, but the "reverse" is oddball (and
based on what really old terminals were limited to when it comes to colour).

I'd rather include 'ESC [50m' (not variable spacing, i.e. "monospace" font)
and 'ESC [26m' (variable spacing, i.e. "proportional" font). Recall that
this is NOT for terminal emulators but for styling applied to text
outside of terminal emulators. (Terminal emulators already implement
much of this and more; albeit sometimes wrongly). This would be handy
for including (say) programming code or computer commands (or for that
matter, "ASCII art", or more generally "Unicode art") in otherwise
"ordinary"
text... (The "ordinary" text preferably set in a proportional font.)

> € Reset all attributes: ESC [m

(Actually 'ESC [0m', with the 0 default-able.) Handy, agreed, but not 100%
necessary.
These ESC-sequences should not normally be inserted "manually" but by a text
editor program, using the conventional means of "making bold" etc. (ctrl-b,
cmd-b,
"bold" in a menu); only "hackers" (in the positive sense) would actually
bother
about the command sequences as such.

/Kent K


> where ESC is U+001B.
>  
> This mechanism has existed for around 40 years and is already supported
> as widely as any new Unicode-only convention will ever be.
>  
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
>  
> 

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