Encoding italic

[Phake Nick via Unicode]

2019-1-25 13:46, Garth Wallace via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 1:27 AM James Kass via Unicode <
> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Nobody has really addressed Andrew West's suggestion about using the tag
>> characters.
>>
>> It seems conformant, unobtrusive, requiring no official sanction, and
>> could be supported by third-partiers in the absence of corporate
>> interest if deemed desirable.
>>
>> One argument against it might be:  Whoa, that's just HTML.  Why not just
>> use HTML?  SMH
>>
>> One argument for it might be:  Whoa, that's just HTML!  Most everybody
>> already knows about HTML, so a simple subset of HTML would be
>> recognizable.
>>
>> After revisiting the concept, it does seem elegant and workable. It
>> would provide support for elements of writing in plain-text for anyone
>> desiring it, enabling essential (or frivolous) preservation of
>> editorial/authorial intentions in plain-text.
>>
>> Am I missing something?  (Please be kind if replying.)
>>
>
> There is also RFC 1896 "enriched text", which is an attempt at a
> lightweight HTML substitute for styling in email. But these, and the ANSI
> escape code suggestion, seem like they're trying to solve the wrong problem
> here.
>
> Here's how I understand the situation:
> * Some people using forms of text or mostly-text communication that do not
> provide styling features want to use styling, for emphasis or personal flair
> * Some of these people caught on to the existence of the "styled"
> mathematical alphanumerics and, not caring that this is "wrong", started
> using them as a workaround
> * The use of these symbols, which are not technically equivalent to basic
> Latin, make posts inaccessible to screen readers, among other problems
>
> These are suggestions for Unicode to provide a different, more
> "acceptable" workaround for a lack of functionality in these social media
> systems (this mostly seems to be an issue with Twitter; IME this shows up
> much less on Facebook). But the root problem isn't the kludge, it's the
> lack of functionality in these systems: if Twitter etc. simply implemented
> some styling on their own, the whole thing would be a moot point.
> Essentially, this is trying to add features to Twitter without waiting for
> their development team.
>
> Interoperability is not an issue, since in modern computers copying and
> pasting styled text between apps works just fine.
>

How about outside social media system? For example, Chinese Braille have
symbols that indicate the start and end position of proper name mark and
book name mark punctuation, however when converted to plain text they
cannot be displayed with Unicode text because of the mindset that it should
be the task of styling software to render this punctuation, just because
the two punctuations are basically straight underline and wavy underline
beneath text in normal Chinese text.

>
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