OverStrike control character

[James Kass]

On 2020-06-20 10:30 AM, David Starner via Unicode wrote:
> It doesn't feel that you want a
> way to store and display overtyped text, it feels that you want
> Unicode to officially support it. It's a very complex and expensive
> expansion, but if a bunch of people were using overtyped text, this
> discussion might be going differently.
Yes.  And even if we suppose that some groups like coin collectors or 
epigraphers might find that kind of feature helpful, there's a couple of 
points to consider.  One is that groups like that are probably already 
cheerfully exchanging information using either some kind of rich text 
scheme or some kind of plain-text convention.  The other is that if 
their needs were not being met they would be lobbying to get some kind 
of support, which doesn't seem to be happening.

In the case of coin catalogs, the 'spell-it-out' convention predates the 
computer era.  It wouldn't surprise if epigraphic conventions also 
predate computers.  People tend to stick with their conventions.  If the 
overstrike feature became available in plain-text, I'd expect the coin 
catalogs to keep spelling things out for both clarity and consistency.