A last missing link for interoperable representation

[David Starner via Unicode]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 2:03 AM James Kass via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org>
wrote:

> The boundaries of plain text have advanced since the concept originated
> and will probably continue to do so.  Stress can currently be
> represented in plain text with conventions used in lieu of existing
> typographic practice.  Unicode can preserve texts created using the
> plain text kludges/conventions for marking stress, but cannot preserve
> printed texts which use standard publishing conventions for marking
> stress, such as italics.
>

Is there any way to preserve The Art of Computer Programming except as a
PDF or its TeX sources? Grabbing a different book near me, I don't see any
way to preserve them except as full-color paged reproductions. Looking at
one data format, it uses bold, italics, and inversion (white on black), in
sans-serif, serif and script fonts; certainly in lines like
"<b>Treasure</b> standard (+1 <i>starknife</i>)", offering "Treasure
standard (+1 <i>starknife</i>)" is completely insufficient.

Can some books be mostly handled with Unicode plain text and italics? Sure.
HTML can handle them quite nicely. I'd say even them will have headers that
are typographically distinguished and should optimally be marked in a
transcription.
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