Names for control characters (Was: "(in 6429)" in allkeys.txt)

Ken Whistler wrote:
> Ah, I see what the interpretation problem was. Yes, that is
> a straightforward kind of improvement -- easily enough done.
> Look for a change the next time the file is updated. (It will not
> be immediately changed, pending other review comments.)

Thanks! Then I'll skip making a formal request about this.

Regarding these names in ISO 6429 again, how come these control
characters don't have Unicode names? For many uses of names, the control
characters have as much need for them as any other character.
Since it seems so straightforward it must have been suggested several
times to introduce names like

  CONTROL CHARACTER NULL
  CONTROL CHARACTER START OF HEADING
  CONTROL CHARACTER START OF TEXT

etc., so I assume there are good reasons for not doing that, but I can't
see what they are.

Since applications want names they will use other things as names when
there isn't a real name, and that leads to problems. Take Emacs where
the command describe-char currently describes U+0007 as

          name: <control>
          old-name: BELL

(I reported the misusage of "<control>" here as a name in 2009, but it
wasn't fixed until this year, so still not in a released version.)
The usage of "BELL" here invites confusion with U+1F514 BELL.

Emacs should do better regarding this, but still, with a proper name
all of this would have been averted.
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Received on Wed Mar 12 2014 - 07:33:28 CDT