A last missing link for interoperable representation

[James Kass via Unicode]

Martin J. Dürst wrote,

 > Almost by definition, styled text isn't plain text, even if it's
 > simulated by something else.

By an earlier definition, in-line pictures weren't plain text, until 
people started exchanging them as though they were.  In this case, 
people are exchanging plain text as plain text.

 > And the simulation is highly limited, as
 > the voicing examples and the fact that the math alphanumerics
 > only cover basic Latin have shown.

The voicing examples are software shortcomings which could be overcome.  
The software people might seize the opportunity to accommodate their 
users and vocalize bold *loudly*, italics with /stress/, and fraktur 
with a Boris Karloff (or Bela Lugosi) voice. That would be up to them.  
But the voicing examples aren't really about reading and writing and how 
they relate to the character encoding.  (Not saying that the voicing 
examples aren't interesting and relevant to the overall topic.)

The fact that the math alphanumerics are incomplete may have been part 
of what prompted Marcel Schneider to start this thread.

If stringing encoded italic Latin letters into words is an abuse of 
Unicode, then stringing punctuation characters to simulate a "smiley" 
(☺) is an abuse of ASCII - because that's not what those punctuation 
characters are *for*.  If my brain parses such italic strings into 
recognizable words, then I guess my brain is non-compliant.