From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 15:10:40 CST
On 12/30/00 10:34 AM, Erland Sommarskog at <sommar@algonet.se> wrote:
> Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk) writes:
>> In <B6710F0F.BE5B%planb@newsreaders.com> "J.B. Moreno"
>> <planb@newsreaders.com> writes:
>>> 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.
>>
>> OK, I have noted that text as an alternative possibility. Further opinions?
>
> I prefer:
>
> NOTE: Backspace (ASCII 8) was historically used for underlining, done by
> an underscore (ASCII 95), a backspace, and a character, repeated for each
> character that should be underlined. However, this usage is declared
> obsolete by this standard and posters are warned that many reading agents
> does not support this feature and only display the backspace with a
> generic "unknown-character" symbol.
I'm not sure about declaring it obsolete, I prefer to simply say that it
isn't supported.
But I definitely don't like the part about "and only display...", because
that's just one possible failure mode (it could be that the backspace is
actually interpreted and the underscore deleted), and it doesn't matter what
they do if they don't support it -- they don't support it, which is all the
poster needs to be warned about.
-- John Moreno