Emotes

[William_J_G Overington]

Sławomir Osipiuk wrote as follows.

> The one legitimate issue is that maybe you want the syntax to be 
> default-ignorable "for free" on platforms that don't support it and 
> the existing unicode tag characters look mighty tempting.

It seems to me that one could have a graphics format that defaults 
gracefully to give an indication of the intended graphic by using a few 
symbols each accompanied by a Variation Selector, for example herein, 
U+FE0C VARIATION SELECTOR-13.

Whereas, there are

U+25A0 BLACK SQUARE
U+25A1 WHITE SQUARE
U+2605 BLACK STAR

One could have the following.

Ordinary Unicode display is called text mode
The is also graphics mode.

The sequence U+25A0 U+FE0C means

begin
if in text mode then
begin
enter graphics mode;
start a graphic with a black pixel in the upper left corner;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that black pixel;
end
elsif in graphics mode then
begin
place a black pixel at next_place;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that black pixel;
end;
end.

The sequence U+25A1 U+FE0C means

begin
if in text mode then
begin
enter graphics mode;
start a graphic with a white pixel in the upper left corner;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that white pixel;
end
elsif in graphics mode then
begin
place a white pixel at next_place;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that white pixel;
end;
end.

The sequence U+2605 U+FE0C means

begin
if in graphics mode then
begin
set next_place to be at the start of the next row of the graphic;
end;
end.

In graphics mode, carriage return, linefeed and space are ignored.

In graphics mode, any character received that is not a graphics mode 
sequence causes graphics mode to be left gracefully and the received 
character to be displayed in text mode after the graphic, the graphic 
continuing to be displayed.

----

The above describes a first attempt to produce something to discuss.

The capabality of the system could be extended to include colours.

The capability of the system could be extended to produce 3d images too 
by using
U+25CB WHITE CIRCLE and
U+25B2 BLACK UP-POINTING TRIANGLE

The sequence U+25CB U+FE0C means

begin
if in text mode then
begin
enter graphics mode;
start a graphic with a transparent pixel in the upper left corner;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that transparent pixel;
end
elsif in graphics mode then
begin
place a transparent pixel at next_place;
set next_place be one pixel to the right of that transparent pixel;
end;
end.

The sequence U+25B2 U+FE0C means

begin
if in graphics mode then
begin
set next_place to be at the start of the first pixel of the first row of 
the graphic, one layer forward of the present layer;
end;
end.

In 3d images, each pixel would be regarded as a voxel.

Someone typesetting such a graphic could thus include carriage return 
and line feed characters as they would not affect the graphic display 
but would help to provide a graceful fallback display.

To help in providing a graceful fallback display, U+25B6 BLACK 
RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE could be used in the system.

The sequence U+25B6 U+FE0Cmeans

begin
enter graphics mode;
set next_place at the upper left corner;
end.

could be used folowed by carriage return and line feed, if so desired.

That would mean that the fallback display would start on a new line of 
the display rather than the first line of the fallback display not being 
aligned with subsequent lines of the fallback display.

  William Overington

Friday 5 August 2022