A last missing link for interoperable representation

[Julian Bradfield via Unicode]

On 2019-01-13, Marcel Schneider via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> As far as the information goes that was running until now on this List,
> Mathematicians are both using TeX and liking the Unicode math alphabets.

As Khaled has said, if they use them, it's because some software
designer has decided to use them to implement markup.
I have never seen a Unicode math alphabet character in email outside
this list.

> These statements make me fear that the font you are using might unsupport
> the NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE U+202F > <. If you see a question mark between

It displays as a space. As one would expect - I use fixed width fonts
for plain text.

> these pointy brackets, please let us know. Because then, You’re unable to
> read interoperably usable French text, too, as you’ll see double punctuation
> (eg "?!") where a single mark is intended, like here !

I see "like here !".
French text does not need narrow spacing any more than science does.
When doing typography, fifty centimetres is $50\thinspace\mathrm{cm}$;
in plain text, 50cm does just fine.
Likewise, normal French people writing email write "Quel idiot!", or
sometimes "Quel idiot !".

If you google that phrase on a few French websites, you'll see that
some (such as Larousse, whom one might expect to care about such
things) use no space before punctuation, while others (such as some
random T-shirt company) use an ASCII space.

The Académie Française, which by definition knows more about French
orthography than you do, uses full ASCII spaces before ? and ! on its
front page. Also after opening guillemets, which looks even more
stupid from an Anglophone perspective.

> Aiming at extending the subset of environments supporting correct typesetting

There are many fine programs, including TeX, for doing good
typesetting. Unicode is not about typesetting, it's about information
exchange and preservation.


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