<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div><font color="#5856d6" class=""><br class=""></font><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Hi!</span><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Just a note about that I have updated two documents related to Unicode. I have posted about (earlier</div><div>versions of) them before.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>—————————————————————————————<br class=""><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">I have done some updates to my "proposed update" (I have actually no hope that the standard</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">itself will be updated) to ECMA-48 (ISO/IEC 6429) regarding text styling. You find them in</span><br class=""><a href="https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/ecma-48-style-modernisation-2023B.pdf" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><span lang="EN-GB" class="">https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/ecma-48-style-modernisation-2023B.pdf</span></a><span lang="EN-GB" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">As I have mentioned before, ECMA-48 provides some styling mechanisms (more than you might</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">think) via so-called control sequences. They are designed to be what Unicode calls "default</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">ignorable", though they are character sequences, not singular characters, but they do start</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">with a "control" character.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Even though these styling (and a few structuring) mechansims are more powerful than first</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">meets the eye, it is noticable thet the standard (latest version) is more than 30 years old.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">But it is still used, and indeed still useful. But in the "proposed update" I pick up some</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">additions done elsewhere, as well as add other styling "kinds" that are often found in modern</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">stylable text contexts, plus nailing down the semantics more tightly, like "exactly" (modulo</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">colour correction, which is out of scope) which colour is "blue", "green", etc. similar</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">to what is done in CSS.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">The new version has been adapted to cater for some comments I got on an earlier version.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">I hereby thank for those comments, without mentioning any particular names. For instance,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">I have updated the text on bidi handling and how the Unicode bidi algorithm is tied in</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">(or not tied in in some cases). But there are many other updates since the last version,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">most of them based on comments I got.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Some functionality:</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Bold, italic, underline, strike-through, font selection (from a small palette).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Font size setting.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Paragraph indents setting.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - "Bullet" (and numbered) lists (though the "bullet"/number character(s) must</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> be given explicitly as they are to be displayed, it is not automatic).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Tab position setting (not new, of course).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Tables, or actually table rows (though cell framing and background colour</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> must be given explicitly for each cell) (not new, though an improved PTX).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Colours for text, background, and more.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Text direction control (including (new) bidi setting; but otherwise not new).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - Page or table cell rotation (and that is not at all new).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">It is not a full-fledged document formatting specification. Way too much functionality</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">is missing for that. But it does provide for a "middle ground" between "pure plain text"</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">and "full-fledged document formatting". There is a way to big gap between "pure plain</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">text" and a (high-end) document formatting system. As I may have mentioned earlier,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">there is no need to try to invent something from scratch for putting something useful</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">in that gap. Instead ECMA-48 is a good and viable basis. Implementers can use the</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">specified functionalities as a smörgåsbord, from which to pick functionality that</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">the implementors, together with their clients, choose to support (as ECMA-48 always</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">has been, and like Unicode is today as well).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">All of this of course bypasses the question whether ECMA-48 control sequences were</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">ever intended to be used for styled text document storage. Perhaps they were not,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">but that is moot, especially now when we have "graphical" text editors that manage</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">the file storage representation in the background.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">I think Unicode/10646 have treated ECMA-48/ISO6429 waaaay too </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">step-motherly</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">, a</span></font></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">treatment</span> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">it does not deserve.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">(I think also the keyboard input part of ECMA-48 also needs a bit of updating, but</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">that will be the subject of another, separate, proposal. But I only have a draft so far,</span></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">si I</span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">’</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">m </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">to</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> giving a link here.)</span></font><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">————————————————————</span></font><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">I have also updated the math expression representations proposals. You find them in</span><br class=""><a href="https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/math-layout-controls-2023-B.pdf" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><span lang="EN-GB" class="">https://github.com/kent-karlsson/control/blob/main/math-layout-controls-2023-B.pdf</span></a><span lang="EN-GB" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">The updates from the last version here are smaller. Mainly that I have integrated the</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">mirroring pair data for arrows (and more) in an appendix (since I don't yet see any</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">progress in including that data file in the Unicode database, which I have proposed).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">Note that the math expression representation proposals are separate from the ECMA-48</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">update proposal, even though one of the three variants is compatible with ECMA-48.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">The three different representations (1. compatible with control codes, using SCI</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">control sequences; 2. compatible with HTML/SVG, and maybe other XML based schemes;</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">3. markdown style) are fully interequivalent. (No claim of equivalence to other</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">math expression representations.)</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">They also:</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - are the only math expression represntations I know of that handle combining</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> characters correctly,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - are almost the only math expression represntations I know of that I am sure,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> handle multiletter variables correctly (TeX has \mathit{...} for handling</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> multiletter variables),</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - are the only math expression representations I know of that handle bidi for</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> math expressions correctly and reliably, including handling arrows in math</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> expression and (explicit) mirroring of (potential math) symbols that have</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> no mirror character allocated,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - avoid the verbosity of MathML and OMML, but still has an HTML/SVG </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">compatible</span> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">variant representation type,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - forbid the use of "MATHEMATICAL" characters, which were a bad idea from </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">the</span> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">very beginning; these formats have a more general and more flexible </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">mechanism</span> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">for math style for letters/digits, and that mechanism is </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">incompatible with</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">"MATHEMATICAL" characters,</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> - are simple and straightforward representations.</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">As for which letters/digits/symbols to support (and for which math styles), that is up to</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">implementers and their clients. But one would expect at least A-Z, a-z to be supported for</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">most styles, 0-9 and common Greek letters (and two Hebrew letters) for some styles, plus</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">common math symbols (selected subset of Sm union So).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">These math expression representations fits for anything from pure plain text to</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">ECMA-48 styled text to HTML and various document formats, including having math</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">expressions in graphs/diagrams (HP-GL, SVG, ...).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">I don't have a catchy name for these math expression representations. I realise that</span><br class=""><span lang="EN-GB" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">that is a flaw in marketing... "KISS-math"? (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><span lang="EN-GB" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle</span></a><span lang="EN-GB" class="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">),</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">with my preferred reading: "keep it small and simple" (which is the design principle,</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">despite the more than 70 pages). The design is simple, and the math expression </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">representations</span> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">are small (compared to several other proposals). I would also say it</span></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">is </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">”straightforward</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">"</span></font> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class="">(but "KISSS", naa).</span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><br class=""><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class="">——————————————————————</span></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" class=""><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;" class=""><br class=""></span></font><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">/Kent K</div></div></div><br class=""></body></html>