Re: APL Under-bar Characters

On 16 Aug 2015, at 16:35, Alex Weiner wrote:

> I have heard that the problem was brought to Unicode consortium before, and the answer was to just use the underline styling, as it is apparently equivalent, but I do not think it is. Underline styling usually connects the line from one letter to another like this. The under-bar characters do not do such connecting, and are actually only for capital letters. so It would look more  L I K E   T H I S  (I added the spaces for dramatic effect).

[And I left out the underscore in the middle.]

This connecting behavior of the underline formatting can be disabled by checking the “Words only” check box in LibreOffice Writer and surely in new versions of Microsoft Office Word, or in older versions by selecting “Words” in the underline style dropdown menu.

When the Words only feature is enabled, the underline skips all spaces, including no-break spaces.
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I need to mention that I would have posted this yesterday, but refrained for having sent something too much these days, particularly in the threads about Michael Kaplan. I declare again to be very sorry, and I ask Michael to forgive my reactions to his blog post he wrote up ad hoc while he was angry about our discussion here.

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On 17 Aug 2015 at 02:25, Ken Whistler wrote:

> It isn't as if a bunch of ignorant Unicoders just grabbed one APL book off the shelf and coded up the table, not noticing that some stuff was missing.

The received false idea about underline formatting (which "usually connects"), that in this highly technical context (after all, a programming language) has been opposed to the advice of the Unicode consortium: I couldn't help thinking immediately that such reasonings are symptomatic of the Unicode contesting posture that seems to be the first reflex of many people (including myself) from the beginning on (historically as well as personally speaking). As I too, at my beginning on this mailing list (which at the same time has been my first mailing list participation), went on in such an immature attempt, I'm seeming to be well placed to state once and for all (I hope) that making trouble for little to no use is a bit like process garbage: it wasts the energy (mental/physical) that needs to be used/saved to save the planet, as far as extends to the life on it.

All the best,

Marcel
Received on Mon Aug 17 2015 - 06:50:00 CDT