Have Characters that Depict Electronic Components been Discussed?

[Martin Vahi]

First of all, thank You to everybody for their helpful answers.
I think that I'll settle with what R.B. suggests at the next quote:

On 8/17/24 11:49, Rebecca Bettencourt via Unicode wrote:
 >...
 > Look up sixel graphics and ReGIS. Spend energy on getting
 > terminal emulators and command line applications to support
 > these already-existing higher-level protocols instead of
 > trying to half-bake a new one into a text encoding standard
 > that will never accept it.
 >...

What regards to the J.D. statement at the next quote

On 8/16/24 21:56, Jim DeLaHunt via Unicode wrote:
 >...
 > Or, use the alternate, text plus graphics paradigms which
 > already support this. The Unicode design principles say that
 > Unicode is centred on exchange of universal plain text, and it
 > leaves a lot of domains to "higher-level protocols". Why are
 > you so reluctant to use the higher-level protocols?
 >...

then, again, thank You, it's a helpful read, but my answer to the
question about my reluctance to using those higher-level protocols is
that from software developer's perspective I just want to WRITE ONCE
WITHOUT NEEDING TO REWRITE OLD SOFTWARE unless the end user requirements
for the software change. For example, in my view, if some application
uses Adobe Flash or Java Applets or Microsoft Silverlight or VRML that
at some point are not supported by mainstream web browsers or their
default-installed-plugins, then from my perspective the need to swap
out the code parts that depend on or are implemented in Java Applets
and alike is NOT AN END USER REQUIREMENT CHANGE but just a nuisance due
to technology trend changes. End users could not care less, if the 3D
thing that they move with their mouse is in some Java Applet or WebGL or
what ever else, as long as it just works for them without fiddling with
the computer. Text based things TEND TO WORK, but those higher-level
protocols tend to NOT BE RELIABLY AVAILABLE.

An example: anything with an URL that starts with https. The moment some
crypto algorithms change, may be some signing servers at the chain of
domain authentication change, there is suddenly a need for those changes
to be reflected at client computer, be it some "trusted certificates"
or recompilation of a newer version of the openssl library (in Linux
world).  That's not exactly a kind of technology that one can use at
some laptop that is shipped with industrial equipment for changing
the settings of that equipment about 10 years after the sales, unless
there is some direct cable going from the industrial equipment to the
laptop that was shipped with it, provided that the laptop will even
boot after its Flash memory based SSD has lost the data over time. With
magnetic disks there's actually hope that the computer will boot, if
the disks have been kept cool enough. As of 2024_08 the best workaround
that I'm aware of to the data loss problem is to ship MDisc DVD's for
reinstalling everything from scratch or to use MDisc based "live" disks.
With the MDisc DVDs or MDisc BluRay based solution one can use what
ever fancy software of a given era, with the caveat that electrolytic
capacitors on motherboards have an approximate life span of 20 years
even in storage. According to some statements on the Wild-Wild-Web the
new supercapacitors do not last longer than the old style electrolytic
capacitors. Basically, the best bet from hardware point of view is to
try to craft software so that it would work with future computers, which
might lead one to think about the use of emulators: just install all
in a virtual appliance and the virtual appliance will run on future
computers.

The virtual appliance based approach is, what is being tried for running
old industrial equipment and there even seem to be virtual appliance
running software agnostic virtual appliance storage device image formats
like the OVF

     https://www.dmtf.org/standards/ovf
     archival copy: https://archive.ph/rZJdJ

but, again, will that be the
"new Java Applet"/"new Microsoft Silverlight"/"new Adobe Flash"?
Virtual Appliance running software is not exactly a small piece of
software that somebody could easily maintain oneself as a small side
project, although with the future RISC-V CPU-s there might be hope that
all future CPUs will support the basic RISC-V instruction set and then
there might be a chance to write the emulators once and the core of
them would work on all CPUs and the virtual appliance running software
becomes maintainable to a small team of people, who maintain it as a
small side project.

If Intel and AMD intentionally avoid supporting the RISC-V instruction
set, then that might be solved through some general emulator layer that
Linux will have anyway, so no problem even with those megacorporations,
unless they start making efforts to NOT run Linux, in which case they,
Intel and AMD, would probably be eliminated from server market. On the
other hand, Intel and AMD might not mind taking the same path business
wise that a huge market leader named Nokia took...

That is to say, as of 2024_08 I'm just too stupid to know, what to use other
than text for creating any kind of reliably future proof user interfaces.
I guess old style HTML with images and open source "retro-browsers" like
Dillo or RetroZilla

     https://rn10950.github.io/RetroZillaWeb/

might actually work too. If somebody can maintain/create/develop the
RetroZilla web browser nowadays(2024), then there's hope that some
analogue of it will be available in the future too. The problem,
although relatively minor, is that there needs to be some connection
between the "RetroZilla" and the command line application and that
connection uses operating system API. Opening a port for HTTP is an
operating system matter. May be future operating systems might need
some extra fiddling to get "legacy IPv4 port support" working. On top
of that Microsoft Windows like operating systems might just plain
block anything that wants to open a port, a lot like Windows10 has
those dialogues that ask for firewall hole permissions whenever a newly
installed application wants to connect to the Wild-Wild-Web. Obviously
Microsoft and Apple like companies could not care less, whether some
small freelancer like me can ship software that my remote clients are
actually able to start using without looking for some local IT-support
guy to click the "right OK buttons". Or in the case of industrial cases,
Microsoft and Apple will not pay for the working hours and travel costs
of industrial equipment manufacturing technicians that need to travel
to the other side of the globe to do some mundane setup work. At the
same time industrial electronics manufacturers tend to provide software
libraries and drivers only for Windows, so Linux is less of an option in
industrial equipment that contains that industrial electronics. (Factory
owners refuse make their factory robots remotely accessible due to a
fear of being blackmailed by ransomware creators.)

Plain text seems to stand the test of time the best, despite the awful
pre-Unicode encodings era, where may be only the Japanese got it right
from the very start with their Tron encoding.

     http://justsolve.archiveteam.org/wiki/TRON_code
     archival copy: https://archive.ph/KZpC8

I'm just yearning for a possibility to write software once without it
stop working due to 3rd party activity. Text based user interfaces seem
to be the most robust ones that I'm currently, as of 2024_08, aware of.
That explains, why I'm reluctant to use higher-level protocols.

Thank You for reading my letter and
thank You for Your answers.