Re: “plain text styling”…

[William_J_G Overington]

Kent Karlsson wrote an interesting post.

> More or less regularly there are (informal) requests on this list for 
> encoding (new) control codes or control code sequences for text 
> styling (like bold, italics, text colour, …) also for ”plain text”.


> As I've mentioned long before, there is no need to reinvent that 
> approach (unless you really, really want to...).

Well, I want a fresh system designed specifically to be compatible with 
Unicode please.

A way to do this for indicating italics has been proposed using 
Variation Selector 14.

Alas, it was rejected by the Unicode Technical Committee.

The method decribed could be extended using other variation selectors 
for bold, bold italic, and for various colours too. There are hundreds 
of variation selectors available, so using some of them for this elegant 
futuristic proposal would not restrict uses of variation selectors for 
other purposes.

The method can be implemented using existing font technology.

People who do not want to use the method could simply ignore it.

Yet for the people who choose to use it, documents in plain text format 
could be used to archive text that has features such as italics and 
colour within the text.

Although this method of enhancing plain text could be implemented 
straightforwardly if the Unicode Technical Committee were to approve it, 
the method has been rejected and thus it cannot be implemented at the 
present time and cannot be applied to improve information technology at 
the present time.

But was that rejection a rejection for ever or just a rejection at that 
time? For example, the Unicode Technical Committee at one time decided 
not to encode emoji.

I hope that the method using variation selectors can be reconsidered 
please and that the method can be approved by the Unicode Technical 
Committee so that people who use Unicode can, if they so choose, use the 
proposed system in their documents and communications. It would be a 
magnificent decision for progress.

William Overington

Friday 6 January 2023

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