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Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View


w3c characters

> The question is, why should the privilege of being inconsistent (e.g. using
> the same names for distinct characters) be allowed?

That's a good question, for which different people might have different
answers, and it's the sort of question that I would have expected to see
addressed in the Core WG document, rather than the current document text
which merely states the obvious fact that you can define entities in DTDs.

> But character entity names are
> all drawn from the same Unicode character space.  I have yet to see a
> principled defense for supporting inconsistency here.

I think that either you have to support inconsistency, or provide a
mechanism to ensure consistency, or document that the problem exists but
that the user just needs to be careful and wil get no help from the
system. I don't see  the Core WG document doing any of these things.

> Why not the IETF, or ISO, or OASIS?  

Because XML is housed at W3C.

OASIS effectively has a maping (in its docbook area) ISO/unicode
effectively has a mapping (your original one) which is available from
the unicode site and other places.  W3C has two mappings (XHTML and
MathML). For political reasons if nothing else I don't see how an IETF
(say) mapping could be anything more than yet another incompatible
set. If the W3C coordinated a unified mapping and MathML and XHTML used
it (and Docbook followed suit when Norm switched hats from XML Core to
Docbook) then the man in the street might get the impression that there
was at last some progress and a unified set. It doesn't have to be the
current members of XML core do the work if you are already over
stretched, but I think it has to be a W3C Recommendation from the XML
Activity.

David



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