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Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

• To: jcowan@r...
• Subject: Re: Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
• From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
• Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 16:40:28 GMT
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <200211041622.LAA04660@m...> (message fromJohn Cowan on Mon, 4 Nov 2002 11:08:16 -0500 (EST))
• References: <200211041622.LAA04660@m...>

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

OK since you assert that this is so easy, what would _you_ suggest to do
about asymp.

docbook (and the unicode ISO mappings) maps this entity to a cup-cap symbol.
U224D

(X)HTML maps it to a double tilde U2248

So MathML allows <mo>&asymp;</mo> and this can be used in docbook+mathml
and xhtml+mathml documents.

If you change either of the docbook or xhtml dtd definitions to be
consistent with the other then you risk -silently- changing thousands
(millions?) of documents with no warning to the user than the character
in the text and quite likely the meaning of the expression has changed.

> I have yet to see a principled defense for supporting inconsistency here.


I have yet to see a principled defence why the spelling of defence
should change as you cross the atlantic. these things just happen if you
have history rather than design on a clean slate. You can't, from your
position in XML Core, just state "It shouldn't happen" and ignore the
evidence that every single person who's attempted to define these
mappings has ended up being inconsistent with everyone else.

David

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