asterisks as bold or italic? (another push)

[Timothy Binder]

Lou,

Thank you for some very valid points. If John chooses to leave things 
as they are, your concepts will help me let them go. (I really don't 
want to be that old geezer who refuses to change with the times.) 
However, plain text email limitations are pretty close to what was 
available with typewriters, so the techniques adopted for one could be 
somewhat relevant for the other.

I hadn't realized that XML only had the five entities. That explains 
the use of decimal-encoded entities in SmartyPants. (I'm with the folks 
who miss the larger entity set. It seems like the geeks winning over 
the users. Kind of like ALT-0174 vs. Option-R "®".)

BTW, what do you consider the new meanings of caps and underscore to 
be? I can see caps>>emphasis in print>>SHOUTING, if that's what you 
have in mind -- it's a natural progression -- but underscore?
-- 
Timothy Binder                                Director, President-Elect
Philadelphia Science Fiction Society             <http://www.psfs.org/>
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