Encoding italic

[Doug Ewell via Unicode]

Kent Karlsson wrote:
 
> We already have a well-established standard for doing this kind of
> things...
 
I thought we were having this discussion because none of the existing
methods, no matter how well documented, has been accepted on a
widespread basis as "the" standard.
 
Some people dislike markdown because it looks like lightweight markup
(which it is), not like actual italics and boldface. Some dislike ISO
6429 because escape characters are invisible and might interfere with
other protocols (though they really shouldn't). Some dislike math
alphanumerics abuse because it's abuse, doesn't cover other writing
systems, etc.
 
I'd be happy to work with Kent to campaign for ISO 6429 as "the"
well-established standard for applying simple styling to plain text, but
we would have to acknowledge the significant challenges.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org