Re: Encoding italic

From: James Kass via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 01:53:24 +0000

On 2019-01-27 11:44 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote:

> You're not very explicit about the Tag encoding you use for these styles.

This 󠀼󠁢󠀾bold󠀼󠀯󠁢󠀾 new concept was not mine.  When I tested it
here, I was using the tag encoding recommended by the developer.

> Of course it must not be a language tag so the introducer is not
U+E0001, or a cancel-all tag so it
> is not prefixed by U+E007F   It cannot also use letter-like,
digit-like and hyphen-like tag characters
> for its introduction.  So probably you use some prefix in
U+E0002..U+E001F and some additional tag
> (tag "I" for italic, tag "B" for bold, tag "U" for underline, tag "S"
for strikethough?) and the cancel
> tag to return to normal text (terminate the tagged sequence).

Yes, U+E0001 remains deprecated and its use is strongly discouraged.

> Or may be you just use standard HTML encoding by adding U+E0000 to
each character of the HTML
> tag syntax (including attributes and close tags, allowing embedding?)
So you use the "<" and ">" tag
> characters (possibly also the space tag U+E0020, or TAB tag U+E0009
for separating attributes and the
> quotation tags for attribute values)?  Is your proposal also allowing
the embedding of other HTML
> objects (such as SVG)?

AFAICT, this beta release supports the tag sequences <i></i>, <b></b>,
<s></s>, & <u></u> expressed here in ASCII.  I don’t know if the
software developer has plans to expand the enhancements in the future.

> And what is then the interest compared to standard HTML (it is not
more compact, ...

This was one of the ideas which surfaced earlier in this thread. Some
users have expressed an interest in preserving, for example, italics in
plain-text and are uncomfortable using the math alphanumerics for this,
although the math alphanumerics seem well qualified for the purpose. 
One of the advantages given for this approach earlier is that it can be
made to work without any official sanction and with no action necessary
by the Consortium.

> I bet in fact that all tag characters are most often restricted in
text input forms, and will be
> silently discarded or the whole text will be rejected.

In this e-mail, I used the tags <b> & </b> around the word “bold” in the
first sentence of my reply in order to test your bet.

> We were told that these tag characters were deprecated, and in fact
even their use for language
> tags has not found any significant use except some trials (but there
are now better technologies
> available in lot of softwares, APIs and services, and application
design/development tools, or
> document editing/publishing tools).

Indeed, these tags were deprecated.  At the time the tags were
deprecated, there was such sorrow on this list that some list members
were even inspired to compose haiku lamenting their passing and did post
those haiku to this list.  Now, thanks to emoji requirements, many of
those tags are experiencing a resurrection/renaissance.  I wonder if
anyone is composing limericks in joyful celebration…
Received on Sun Jan 27 2019 - 19:53:52 CST

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