Serious writing (in the Latin script) needs italics

[acdw (Case)]

On 11/26/20 1:06 AM, Krixano wrote:
>> However, I think it is a sign of stronger writing if an author is able to convey their meaning without resorting to what's essentially metadata in their text. Use syntax, word choice, and punctuation to express your intent!
> 
> This makes absolutely no sense.
> What's the difference between regular letters and letters that have diacritics?

A phonemic distinction -- a diacritic'd letter vs. a plain letter can 
differentiate words.  The same is not true of italics, which are 
typographic in nature.

> What's the difference between capitals and lowercase? 

This point is more warranted, I think.  After all, a lot of scripts 
don't differentiate between capitals and minuscules at all, and in fact 
the Roman alphabet didn't have it for much of its history.

However, the distinction is already "supported" in ASCII/UTF, which is 
why I suggested its use in lieu of the poorly-supported italic 
convention.  Use the tools we have, and all that.

> What about Hebrew
> Vowels? Are all those "metadata" also?

I don't know enough about Hebrew to comment, but I would think it'd fall 
under my previous paragraph.

> Italics conveys data itself.
> Italics is part of the writing system. It's not "metadata"
> It's literally no different from using punctuation, or capitals.

The thing is -- if we were to include italics in the spec for 
text/gemini, it'd be set off *using* punctuation, a la Markdown or 
BBText or even HTML.  So why not just use that naked punctuation?  I 
think it's just as easy to understand that *this* is italic as if it 
were actually *in* italics.

-- 
~acdw (Case)
www.acdw.net | breadpunk.club/~breadw