Encoding italic

[James Kass via Unicode]

David Starner wrote,

 >> ... italics, bold, strikethrough, and underline in plain-text
 >
 > Okay? Ed can do that too, along with nano and notepad. It's called
 > HTML (TeX, Troff). If by plain-text, you mean self-interpeting,
 > without external standards, then it's simply impossible.

HTML source files are in plain-text.  Hopefully everyone on this list 
understands that and has already explored the marvelous benefits offered 
by granting users the ability to make exciting and effective page 
layouts via any plain-text editor.  HTML is standard and interchangeable.

As Tex Texin observed, differences of opinion as to where we draw the 
line between text and mark-up are somewhat ideological.  If a compelling 
case for handling italics at the plain-text level can be made, then the 
fact that italics can already be handled elsewhere doesn’t matter.  If a 
compelling case cannot be made, there are always alternatives.

As for use of other variant letter forms enabled by the math 
alphanumerics, the situation exists.  It’s an interesting phenomenon 
which is sometimes worthy of comment and relates to this thread because 
the math alphanumerics include italics.  One of the web pages referring 
to third-party input tools calls the practice “super cool Unicode text 
magic”.