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Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

• To: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Subject: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• From: "J.Pietschmann" <j3322ptm@y...>
• Date: Sat, 02 Nov 2002 15:30:27 +0100
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• References: <200211011409.JAA09934@m...> <3DC29BCE.3020508@t...> <027901c281bd$339574b0$4bc8a8c0@A...> <p04330100b9e8779579a5@[192.168.254.4]>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>> Do we really think people will type &GREEK_SMALL_LETTER_ALPHA;
>> rather than  α  ?   Or
...
> It varies. I can remember α through ω and Α through 
> Ω. I can normally remember é, á, and a few others. 
> However, I always have to look up ones like ü and « whereas I 
> could plausibly guess &LATIN_SMALL_LETTER_U_WITH_DIAERESIS; and 
> &LEFT-POINTING_DOUBLE_ANGLE_QUOTATION_MARK;

Are you sure you can remember &LEFT-POINTING_DOUBLE_ANGLE_QUOTATION_MARK;
or was it &LEFT_POINTING_DOUBLE_ANGLE_QUOTATION_MARK; or
&DOUBLE_ANGLE_QUOTATION_MARK_POINTING_LEFT; ?

IMO the utility of mnemonics is always limited, you'll need
some help for the ones you rarely use anyway. I personally
have a searchable version of the Unicode char DB opened in my
browser while composing XML documents with characters which
are not configured to be entered via intelligent abbreviations
or menus. And at this point there is no longer *any* advantage
in using a mnemonic, I just cut&paste the hex code anyway. So
why are people making so much fuss about mnemonic names for
Unicode characters? I don't think it's worth.

J.Pietschmann

• References:
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
  • Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

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