Re: Encoding italic

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 10:19 PM James Kass via Unicode
<unicode_at_unicode.org> wrote:
> Would there be any advantages to rich-text apps if italics were added to
> Unicode? Is there any cost/benefit data? You've made an assertion
> about complication to rich-text apps which I can neither confirm nor refute.

It's trivial; virtually all rich-text apps support italics or
specifically don't support italics. Suddenly they have to unify
italics from the plain text with the higher level italics, or they
have to exclude italics from the input data.

> One possible advantage would be interoperability. People snagging
> snippets of text from web pages or word processors and dropping data
> into their plain-text windows wouldn't be bamboozled by the unexpected.
> If computer text is getting exchanged, isn't it better when it can be
> done in a standard fashion?

Bamboozled by the unexpected? I think the expectations of those who
have plain-text windows (who are still watching silents, in a sense)
is that pasting data into them will not copy italics. As for more
common users, a quick websearch shows many examples of people
frustrated that they cut and paste something and details like bold and
italics were carried along. This also establishes that current systems
already allow rich text to be cut-and-pasted in a platform-specific
manner.

-- 
Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.