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RE: Blueberry/Unicode/XML

• From: "HUGHES,MARK (Non-HP-FtCollins,ex1)" <mark_hughes@n...>
• To: "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:54:29 -0700

>From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...]
>A few weeks ago, Mark Hughes wrote:
>  > But the
>  > apostrophe is an essential character in Klingon, so you can't currently
>  > write Klingon XML markup.  Given that there are more Klingon users and
>  > programmers than some of the omitted scripts (there's even a Klingon
>  > programming language, var'aq), this is obviously a dire flaw in XML.
>I blew this off at the time, but of course Klingon native-language
>markup *is* supported.  You simply must use U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER
>APOSTROPHE, which looks like the ASCII apostrophe in its curly
>form, but is explicitly a letter.

  I wasn't totally joking there; Klingon is a silly and unspeakable
language (it rips up human throats too much for real use, though I've had
short conversations in it in the past when I was more fluent), but it has
a lot to commend it - it's very direct and precise (like a sharp knife).

  I'm not happy with the idea of using a non-ASCII character that I can't
type on my keyboard instead of an apostrophe, though, especially given
that Romanized Klingon specifically uses the ASCII apostrophe - so you'd
use apostrophe in content and U+02BC in markup.  That'd make searching
through a document or doing software text matching a pain.

  Still, at least it *can* be done.

-- <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>

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