Re: Encoding italic

From: James Kass via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 10:29:11 +0000

David Starner wrote,

> You're emailing from Gmail, which has support for italics in email.

But I compose e-mails in BabelPad, which has support for far more than
italics in HTML mail.  And I'm using Mozilla Thunderbird to send and
receive text e-mail via the Gmail account.

And if I wanted to /display/ italics in a web page, I would create the
source file in a plain-text editor.  (HTML mark-up is fairly easy to
type with the ASCII keyboard.)

If I compose a text file in BabelPad, it can be opened in many rich-text
applications and the information survives intact.  Unless I am foolish
enough to edit the file in the rich-text application and file-save it. 
Because that mungs the plain-text file, and it can no longer be
retrieved by the plain-text editor which created it.

>> ...third-party...
>
> Where are these tools?

BabelPad is an outstanding example.  Earlier in this discussion a web
search found at least a handful of third-party tools devoted to
liberating the math-alphas for Twitter users.

> The superscripts show a problem with multiple encoding; even if you
> think they should be Unicode superscripts, and they look like Unicode
> superscripts, they might be HTML superscripts. Same thing would happen
> with italics if they were encoded in Unicode.

Hmmm.  Rich-text styled italics might be copied into other rich-text
applications, but they cannot be copied into plain-text apps.  If
Unicode-enabled italics existed, plain-text italics could be copy/pasted
into either rich-text or plain-text applications and survive intact.  So
Unicode-enabled italics would be interoperable. Anyone concerned about
interoperability would be well advised to go with plain-text.  I am, so
I do.  When I can.

Kie eksistas fumo, tie eksistas fajro.
Received on Mon Jan 21 2019 - 04:29:43 CST

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