Bo Peng wrote:
What simplicity (assuming that the style is easy to find)? Different
interface of font vs inset? or pavlovian need of having the real
'bold'?
\textbf is simpler than \strong because
1. it is simply \textbf, and \strong can be anything, and to
understand what is \strong, someone needs to understand what is
charstyle, and where to look for its definition, and figure out, in
the end, that it is \textbf (in most cases).
And yet strong is more useful. What to do if the font in use
simply don't have a bold counterpart? Strong can do something
else - increasing the size is always possible for example.
Or what if the font in use is bold already, such as a section heading?
2. it is easier to toggle boldface. A simple operation (usually C-B)
can switch bold face on and off even for a sentense with mixed normal
and bold text. It is much more difficult to work with inset charstyle.
The 'backspace at the beginning of the inset' trick looks more like
magic.
This is fixable. Perhaps (some of) the insets needs to be
toggle-able in order to be user friendly. Program code that
toggles the strong-ness or the emph-ness over a selection
is possible.
Helge Hafting
