[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: [SML] Preliminary EBNF for SML
>Name ::= NameStart (NameChar)* >NameStart ::= [a-zA-Z] | '_' | ':' >NameChar ::= NameStart | [0-9] | '.' | '-' > >Given all the work that's currently going on to >internationalise the web (and computing in general) >and remove historic English bias, is it really >politically or culturally acceptable to restrict >element names to the English alphabet? If SML is >only for English you could restrict the character >data to be ascii as well to save on processing utf8 >characters. If it isn't only for English then the >above would presumably be one of many SML, SML-EN, >and you would expect to see similar variants allowing >element names in French or Russian, or Japanese? Given that most of the popular programming languages have similar limitations regarding identifier names, I think the, so called, English bias is acceptable. Furthermore, XML is supposed to be easily readable by human eye. Question is, is it just the creator's eye or anyone's eye. An XML document created by Chinese engineers will not be very readable to English engineers if names are in Chinese. This will make it difficult for foreign companies to communicate with Chinese e-commerce businesses. The reverse is not true. I dare say that every engineer in the world knows enough English to understand English tag names and attributes names with the aid of readily available dictionary. Ask any foreign engineers if they use names in English or their own language when they name C or C++ identifiers. Ask any foreign engineers if they did not have some English training even before College. Internationalization is also less of a problem than you think. Translating English name to foreign words usually results in a weird words. Just ask any foreigner with foreign version of Windows if the menu commands made good sense to them when they first started using it. The fact is that when a person learns how to use computers in non- English speaking countries, they have to learn a whole new set of words consisting of old or uncommon words overloaded with new meanings. Also, we are going to have a big problem with schema differences in the future and I would rather not have foreign language variations of common tags like <name> and <address> in the pot as well. Best, Don Park - mailto:donpark@d... Docuverse - http://www.docuverse.com xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|