Encoding italic

[David Starner via Unicode]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 11:37 PM James Kass via Unicode
<unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 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.

To the extent I'd have ideology here, it's that that line is arbitrary
and needs to fit practical demands. Should we have eight-bit bytes?
I'm not sure that was the best solution, and other systems worked just
fine, but we've got a computing environment that makes anything else
unpractical. Unlike that question, italics has never been considered
part of plain text and has always been considered outside of plain
text. The fact that italics can be handled elsewhere very much weighs
against the value of your change. Everything you want to do can be
done and is being done, except when someone chooses not to do it.

-- 
Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.