In a related but different vein, have you ever used a Unicode editor? When looking at LinkedIn I came across mention of using Unicode to make a few things like italics and bold and underline display on some post forms that otherwise won't allow formatting using HTML. (A different part of their site does allow formatting, on "articles," a step up from regular posts.) A search brings up a 2001 mention of MS DOS Unicode editors but I don't think there are even fragments of that in Windows any more. I know how to type it (isn't it pretty much like BBCode?)

One site recommended is YayText.