On 10 Oct 2016, at 21:24, Julian Bradfield <jcb+unicode_at_inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> We need reliable plain-text notation systems. Otherwise distinctions we wish to encode may be lost.
>
> We have no need to make such distinctions in "plain text”.
You mightn’t.
> It's convenient to have major distinctions easily accessible without
> font hacking,
Yes, indeed.
> but there's no need to have every notation one might dream up forcibly incorporated into "plain text”.
Hyperbole.
> In particular, for super/subscripts, which is where we came in, even
> the benighted souls using Word still typically recognize and can use
> LaTeX notation.
I can’t use LaTeX notation. I don’t use that proprietary system. And don’t you dare tell me that I am benighted, or using Word. Neither applies.
On 10 Oct 2016, at 21:31, Julian Bradfield <jcb+unicode_at_inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 2016-10-10, Hans Åberg <haberg-1_at_telia.com> wrote:
>> It is possible to write math just using ASCII and TeX, which was the original idea of TeX. Is that want you want for linguistics?
>
> I don't see the need to do everything in plain text.
Of course not. You’re a programmer.
(Mathematical typesetting is not my concern.)
> Because phonetics has a much small set of symbols, I do kwəɪt ləɪk
> biːɪŋ eɪbl tʊ duː ðɪs, and because they're also used in non-specialist
> writing, it's useful to have the symbols hacked into Unicode instead
> of hacked into specialist fonts.
> But subscripts? No need.
And yet we use such things.
I have an edition of the Bible I’m setting. Big book. Verse numbers. I like these to be superscript so they’re unobtrusive. Damn right I use the superscript characters for these. I can process the text, export it for concordance processing, whatever, and those out-of-text notations DON’T get converted to regular digits, which I need.
Michael
Received on Mon Oct 10 2016 - 15:39:27 CDT
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