<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> </head> <body><div class="auto-created-dir-div" dir="auto" style="unicode-bidi: embed;"><style>p{margin:0}</style><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Kent Karlsson wrote an interesting post.</span><div><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></p>> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">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”.</span></div><div><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">> </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: inline !important;">As I've mentioned long before, there is no need to reinvent that approach (unless you really, really want to...).</span></p><p><br></p><p>Well, I want a fresh system designed specifically to be compatible with Unicode please.</p><p><br></p><p>A way to do this for indicating italics has been proposed using Variation Selector 14.</p><p><br></p><p>Alas, it was rejected by the Unicode Technical Committee.</p><p><br></p><p>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. </p><p><br></p><p>The method can be implemented using existing font technology.</p><p><br></p><p>People who do not want to use the method could simply ignore it.</p><p><br></p><p>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. </p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>William Overington</p><p><br></p><p>Friday 6 January 2023</p><p><br></p></div></div></body></html>