On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 09:03:38AM -0700, Doug Ewell wrote: > Andrew West <andrewcwest at gmail dot com> replied to Michael Everson: > > >> I think that having encoded symbols for control characters (which we > >> already have for some of them) is no bad thing, and the argument > >> about "too many characters" is not compelling, as there are only some > >> dozens of these characters encoded, not thousands and thousands or > >> anything. > > > > I oppose encoding graphic clones of non-graphic characters on > > principle, not because of how many there are. > > I agree with Michael about a lot of things, and this isn't going to be > one of them. The main arguments I am seeing in favor of encoding are: > > 1. Graphic symbols for control characters are needed so writers can > write about the control characters themselves using plain text. > > 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.
Could you point a case where such a "meta-meta..." characters could be used? I see that there is a lot of technical literature / documentation / et cetera where one would use a visible representation of invisible character. I don't really see a reason why should someone need a visible "representation" of already visible glyph. > 3. There aren't that many of them. > > We regularly dismiss arguments of the form "But there's lots of room for > these in Unicode" when someone proposes to encode something that > shouldn't be there. I don't see this as any different. Well, what about adding just ONE more "escaping" character that would make the following control code point be displayed? P.T. -- Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek> Jabber: [email protected] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EA 355:001 DU DU DU DU EA 355:002 TU TU TU TU EA 355:003 NU NU NU NU NU NU NU EA 355:004 NA NA NA NA NA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
