From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Thu Dec 28 2000 - 14:38:56 CST
On 12/28/00 2:02 PM, Russ Allbery at <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
> John Stanley <stanley@peak.org> writes:
>
>> No. Change it so neither is encouraged or permitted. There are already
>> common practice methods of emphasizing text, suggesting that people make
>> their text unreadable as a means of emphasizing it is foolish and
>> counterproductive. It is also not common practice -- I've seen it once
>> in the last five years.
>
> I believe the intention was that this be mentioned solely as documentation
> for why backspace is allowed in article bodies. I definitely don't think
> the practice should be recommended or encouraged. Perhaps moving the
> whole thing into a note would be best? Sort of a "here's why backspace is
> allowed, although this isn't really recommended" thing.
Yes, I'd much prefer that to what is there currently -- using _underline_ is
not only more widely supported, but is also more easily interpreted by a
person if the software doesn't do so.
Posters SHOULD avoid using control characters in US-ASCII (or other
CCSs) except for tab (ASCII 9), formfeed (ASCII 12), and backspace
(ASCII 8). Tab signifies sufficient horizontal white space to reach
the next of a set of fixed positions; posters are warned that there
is no standard set of positions, so tabs should be avoided if precise
spacing is essential. Formfeed (which is sometimes referred to as the
"spoiler character") signifies a point at which a reading agent
SHOULD pause and await reader interaction before displaying further
text. Reading agents MUST NOT pass other control characters or escape
sequences unaltered to the output device.
NOTE: Backspace was historically used for underlining, done by an
underscore (ASCII 95), a backspace, and a character, repeated for each
character that should be underlined. Posters are warned that underlining
is not available on all output devices or supported by all reading agents
and is best not relied on for essential meaning.
I'd like to work in a mention of using underscore text underscore, but don't
believe it fits (if it went anywhere it should be in the Body Conventions
section, along with a mention of *bold* and /italic/, but I'm not really
sure if it should be mentioned there either -- it is a bit vague).
-- John Moreno