[DagAgren]

You can't even write proper English in ASCII. ASCII is an absolute dead end. It's history.

Actually representing human language is HARD. It is also absolutely necessary. Whatever solution you choose is going to be complicated, because it is solving a very complicated problem.

Throwing your hands up and going "oh this is too hard, I don't like it" will get you nowhere.

[kazinator]

You can't write proper snooty English in ASCII, with diaereses and whatnot.

[kps]

1967 ASCII anticipated that, with dual-use character shapes so you could type o BS " → ö

But then people invented video terminals that didn't overstrike.

[DagAgren]

ASCII doesn't have have all the punctuation regularly used in English.

[kazinator]

ASCII doesn't have a direct representation of all the punctuation used in English print, like 66 99 quotes, and different kinds of dashes (distinct from minus). For non-print, it's entirely fine.

Typesetting should be handled by a markup language anyway. Adding a few characters to Notepad doesn't create a typesetting system. A typesetting system needs to be able to do kerning, ligatures, justification. Not to mention bold, italics, and different fonts.

[DagAgren]

Why would print be different here? A screen is as much "print" as a paper is these days.

Choosing correct punctuation is not typesetting, either.