Serious writing (in the Latin script) needs italics

[Philip Linde]

On Mon, 09 Nov 2020 20:00:51 +0000
"Thomas M" <thomas5max at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, I hope you'll consider adding markup for emphasis, even if it will
> complicate the client implementation.

It would be the only markup that isn't entirely line prefix based and
would complicate parsing a lot potentially invalidating straight forward
techniques that clients are already using. Rendering something like
*this* as italic text may also be surprisingly error prone, considering
other contexts in which one might want to use "*" and the different
sequences of text one might want to emphasize. It's something Markdown
parsers frequently get wrong, or at the very least causes unintuitive
problems.

I agree that Unicode is not a good solution to the problem since the
italic blocks are intended for mathematical use, not emphasis. Unicode
deliberately avoids repeating the work of what the consortium thinks
belongs to a markup language (but does not show the same apprehension
for pictures of levitating men in business suits).

Perhaps some clients could optionally choose to interpret "*-encoded"
italics in the way you suggest in a way that's easy to toggle. Such a
feature is either allowed ("Text lines may be presented to the user in
a visually pleasing manner for general reading, the precise meaning of
which is at the client's discretion.") or prohibited ("Authors should
not expect to exercise any control over the precise rendering of their
text lines, only of their actual textual content.") depending on your
reading of the spec. But do consider the way in which I might started
an emphasis block earlier in this paragrah, which I'll now complete: *

-- 
Philip
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