Ecma-48 proposed styling controls update updated & math expression representation proposal update

[Alexander Lange]

On 06.01.2024 14:46, William_J_G Overington via Unicode wrote:
> Perhaps in a Unicode text system a good solution would be for 
> Unicode/ISO IEC 10646 to have some (not yet encoded) non-printing 
> codes added in plane 14 that are treated as not control codes in most 
> uses yet can be treated as control codes in specific situations. This 
> would mean that a file containing them would not contain Unicode 
> control codes so could be stored and shared as a text file, yet when 
> applied to specific equipment of specific software packages could be 
> treated as if containing control codes.
>
>
> William Overington
>
>
> Saturday 6 January 2024
>

This is pretty much the description of a communication protocol, or a 
declarative language like HTML. But usually it is done using existing 
printable characters from Basic Latin, so they can be viewed and edited 
easily. HTML for example uses tags like this: <p>My paragraph with text</p>

It shows up as it is written in a plain text editor, but the browsers 
recognize the tags and show it as an actual paragraph, making <, > and 
the letters between them behave exactly like the new characters you propose.


I honestly see no benefit in having new characters for this purpose, 
only the disadvantage that the plain text would be harder to edit (and 
unreadable if they are actually non-printing, defeating the whole 
purpose of a plain text format).


Kind regards,
Alexander Lange
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