Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote: >> 1. Graphic symbols for control characters are needed so writers can write >> about the control characters themselves using plain text. > > This does not seem so unreasonable. The RTL and LTR overrides *function* on > the text when inserted into text. So you can't use those with glyphs in a > font to represent for example the UCS dotted-boxes-with-letters, because they > are control characters and will affect the text.
Do people really need assigned characters (not just glyphs) to represent these things, instead of just talking about them? I see text all the time that refers to characters using the name of the character, or its U+ value, or some informal name or descriptive phrase like "the RTL and LTR overrides." How common is the need to have a discrete character to talk about another character? >> I don't think there's any end to where this can go. As Martin said, >> eventually you'd need a meta-meta-character to talk about the >> meta-character, and then it's not just a size problem, but an >> infinite-looping problem. > > I do not follow the logic of this assertion. SPACE and SYMBOL FOR SPACE > exist. No infinite recursion is needed. How do I talk about U+2420 SYMBOL FOR SPACE in plain text? Other than the way I just did, I mean. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 www.ewellic.org | www.facebook.com/doug.ewell | @DougEwell
