I mention it because I think plain text could at least indicate what _should_ display (instead of what *does* display), and a rich environment could make the same text look great.
I think we'll all need for a long time more to write text that displays adequately as plain text in the absence of even OpenType advancexd typography features. On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Ken Whistler <k...@sybase.com> wrote: > On 11/18/2011 11:21 AM, Peter Cyrus wrote: > >> Ken, you mention "defined markup constructions", but nothing would >> prevent specialized rendering software from, for example, connecting a left >> half mark with the corresponding right half mark via titlo, even though the >> text is still only plain text with no markup, right? The titlo would >> simply not display as such in the absence of the right software. >> > > Correct. "Specialized rendering software" can pretty much do whatever its > programmers > want it to do. > > But there would be no reason to limit that to what it could do with the > hacky left- > and right-half marks, either. > > "Specialized rendering software" could detect a sequence <letter, > combining titlo, letter, > letter>, decide the three letters constituted a Cyrillic number and draw > the titlo > over all three letters as well. Or a "specialized" Cyrillic font could > contain ligatures > which would do the same, without requiring specialized code in a rendering > engine. > > The problem would be there will be people who would expect such > specialized rendering > to be specified *in* the standard and be supported by *non*-specialized > rendering > engines and fonts, because their multi-letter titlos don't display > "correctly" when posted > on websites and viewed by people who don't have specialized rendering > software > or specialized fonts. > > That's when the answer has to be no. At that point, the responsibility > really falls on > the folks who need to score text to define the higher-level protocols to > do so, and then > convince the people who want to support that kind of text convention to do > the > implementation(s) required to make it happen. > > --Ken > >
