RE: PRI #299

Leo Broukhis <leob at mailcom dot com> wrote:

>> This is a handy feature, at least for character geeks like us, but
>> "most platforms" might be a bit misleading here. There is a rather
>> commonly used platform that starts with the letter W which does not
>> do this.
>
> I was a little surprised myself when I saw it in Firefox under W7
> Enterprise, but here we are.

I'm surprised too; I hadn't tried using Firefox to view these sequences.
Thanks for demonstrating this.

We may once again be stumbling over different interpretations of the
word "platform": does it refer to an operating system in general, a
specific version thereof, or a specific editor, word processor, or
browser under that OS and version?

>> I think a useful bit of feedback on PRI #299 would be to inquire
>> whether it is, in fact, a design goal to handle this use case of
>> transparency of
>
> Huh? What kind of a deliberate design goal would be to forgo semantics
> in favor of presentation, even as a fallback behavior?
> In an ideal world, where all platforms are actively maintained, and
> all maintainers rush to implement the cool new features,
> it could have been acceptable, but not in our world, I'm afraid.

I questioned whether it was a (positive) design goal to handle the
fallback case in the way you described. I did not suggest that it was a
(negative) design goal NOT to handle it, or to obscure the tag
characters, and I would suggest there is a huge difference between the
two.

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸