Keeping ranges undefined doesn't satisfy these wants, either. Using code points would at least allow for ranges to have the possibility of being usable to some

Keeping ranges undefined doesn't satisfy these wants, either. Using code points would at least allow for ranges to have the possibility of being usable to someone in a standard, predictable fashion, outside of the C/POSIX locale. For example, specifying a-z plus each umlauted vowel is still shorter than specifying all letters individually. Perhaps there is some wisdom in William S. Burrough's "If you can't be just, be arbitrary."