Formatting Problems like strange underlining, strikethrough or spacing

In Talks.cam, formatted text (e.g. bold, italic) is supported in the Abstract of a Talk, and the Description of a List.

Unfortunately, there are some bugs with this functionality. A common problem is that formatting such as underlining appears even when you didn't want it, this is due to certain symbols being mistakenly interpreted as formatting symbols.

Some examples are shown below, along with suggested ways to workaround the problem. There may well be other bugs.

The workarounds are not particularly elegant; sorry about this. If you discover better ones, please do let us know!

The Talks.cam software as a whole is rather old and a replacement is in the pipeline, so we have decided to focus our efforts on that rather than fixing relatively minor bugs in the existing system, please accept our apologies.

Intended Text	Actual Appearance	Appearance of Suggested Workaround	Notes
The programming language was C++, and the seminar was also about C++.	The programming language was C+, and the seminar was also about C+.	The programming language was C＋＋, and the seminar was also about C＋＋.	Use ＋ symbol instead of an ordinary "+" - you can copy and paste the symbol from this example.
The F(-) structure will be discussed at the F(-) seminar.	The F() structure will be discussed at the F() seminar.	The F(−) structure will be discussed at the F(−) seminar.	Use − symbol instead of an ordinary "-" - you can copy and paste the symbol from this example.
PETSc and OLEDs	PET Sc and OLE Ds	"PETSc" and "OLEDs"	Put quotes around it to stop the spurious spaces appearing.