What is "Appoencode"? Is it a function to encode text into appos? Is it a secret language used by the people of Appoen to let them speak about outsiders right in front of said outsiders? Is it the magnum opus of Sylvia J. Appoencode, an information theorist who enjoyed colorful online text adventures? Yes! All true! But appoencodes* are not just that, they are also THE WAY OF THE FUTURE!

CavemanJoe, you have suggested that in Season 3 you will move the island to 2-character appoencodes. This would be acceptable, but it seems inelegant, and I'd probably forget the appencodes all the time. Instead, I'd like to propose a system of short appoencodes and long appoencodes. Short appoencodes would be similar to the appoencodes we have today: they would consist of a grave followed by an alphanumeric character (or a grave) and generally have to do with changing the color of text. Long appoencodes would be different: they would consist of a grave, followed by a special character, followed by a string of arbitrary length terminated with a semicolon.

The uses of each:
Short

• Color codes, hopefully arranged in some memorable way.
  
• Bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough, probably represented by `b,`i,`u, and `s.
  
• Aligning text, probably with `l, `r, and `c
  
• Printing grave mark and newline, represented with `` and `n (though hitting enter should still work to insert a newline)
  

Long (of course, these are all rough ideas and may or may not be useful)

• Variables. These would be take the form of something like `$weapon; (though they could additionally have cute little nicknames like `$w; ) Maybe they should be case-sensitive, in that `$weapon; should return, say, "Chainsaw", but `$WEAPON; should return CHAINSAW in case I want to be yelling it. I don't know, that sounds like a spot of bother to program. Anyhow, `$weapon; and `$WEapon; should return the same thing, because we are roleplayers, not fascists.
  
• Fonts. I don't know what character these would use. Maybe "@". They'd let you specify a typeface, like `@Times New Roman; or (with cute nicknames) `@tnr;. `@; would close the font and return to the default.
  
• Size. I also don't know what character to use for this. Let's go with "=" for the sake of example. It would then except a number, or perhaps a number preceded or followed by a label for the type of sizing used. I haven't put much though into this because letting people resize their text seems like a horrible idea, but maybe you'll like the notion more than me.
  
• Custom color codes. These would take the form of `#002244; or `#0F0; (ideally, both forms would be allowed) and would accept 3 or 6 hexadecimal digits RGB format to spin up a new color. If you wanted, "`#;" could also close a color code, like `0.
  
• Links the the Enquirer. This would be a niche feature, but might improve traffic to the Enquirer slightly. It could use "*", because it's like a footnote. the asterisk would then be followed by an "f","w", "b"or "g" to indicate "forum", "wiki", "blog", or "gallery", respectively, and then the id of the thing you are linking to, like `*f32890; or `*bnew_place_forums; or `*wtoo_much_II;. Spaces and such would be coerced into underscores. Honestly, now that I've finished typing this bullet point, I don't really see a need for this feature. It's more hassle than just copying the url. Maybe if you just knew the name of a wiki page off-hand, like "dkpersist"? ...I'm sorry to have failed you, everyone.
  
• Extended appoencodes. One of the valuable features of long appoencodes would be future-proofing. If we ever need so many appoencodes that we run out, you can just decree that, say, `^; is the format for accessing extended appoencodes. and the people can be happy typing `^a; whenever they need fourth-dimensional blue or ennui or whatever the hell we have in the future. Similarly, `^^; can extend the number of appoencodes even further, and so on and so forth.
  

*I hope you can pluralize "Appoencode" like that. It's some weird verb-nounification, but I like it. Anyhow, CMJ used the term first, so you can take it up with him