Juliusz Chroboczek <jec@dcs.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> I've got a question about the C0 and C1 control character ranges.
> I call them `legacy control characters'. Do people object to this
> terminology?
>
I hope so! The word "legacy" is emotionally toned and value-laden.
It denigrates 30+ years of computing practice and standards activities,
and it implies that plain text is a relic of the past to be discarded
with all possible haste, and those who haven't done so yet have some
sort of "character" defect.
In fact, plain text is the only immutable format in computing. GUI
and WYSIWYG formats change faster than anybody can keep up with them,
and information encoded in these formats rapidly becomes inaccessible
(or accessible only by utilities (like UNIX "strings") that extract
the plain text from them, if there is any).
> Does anyone have a better name?
>
C0 and C1 control characters. These are ISO standard character sets
and ISO-standard terminology is available to refer to them.
Finally, please remember that Unicode is a plain-text standard. The
control characters are there for a reason: you need them in plain text.
- Frank
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