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Re: Unicode and XML (was Re: Remembering the origina

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• Subject: Re: Unicode and XML (was Re: Remembering the original XML vision)
• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 14:16:23 -0500
• In-reply-to: <oprko65ubyezizxn@s...>
• Organization: Red Bridge Interactive, Inc.
• References: <7c.35a8563b.2b7ff77d@a...> <3E4FC824.4040208@t...> <oprko65ubyezizxn@s...>
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On Sunday 16 February 2003 12:35 pm, Mike Champion wrote:
> Stupid question:  Why couldn't XML incorporate Unicode by reference rather
> than spending half of the spec defining the "unicode-character apparatus"?

There are a fair number of characters that really don't make much sense as 
markup... and XML 1.0 is pretty conservative, but generally sensible. At the 
time, there were no good guidelines from the Unicode consortium on what 
should/should not be allowed, which is something they have addressed 
recently. 

FWIW. It took quite a lot of effort to get where we are now. In 1994, the 
whole idea of using a single document character set was open to debate....and 
Unicode as a BIG question to many people (I got some truly vitriolic emails 
from people who were upset at the idea). It took a couple of years to show 
why fixing the document character set was the only really sensible way of 
making HTML viable from an I18N perspective... and XML rode on that work a 
bit. It still took a bit of debate to open XML up to native language markup. 
The point here is that native language markup and Unicode were not obvious 
choices to the masses until fairly recently.

I think XML 1.0 did very well overall... I actually dislike the approach XML 
1.1 is taking mostly because I think it's a good thing to have a 
self-contained specification, especially a cornerstone spec like XML. This is 
in stark contrast to the spider web of specs we're seeing nowadays.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Unicode and XML (was Re: Remembering the originalXML vision)
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  • Re: Remembering the original XML vision
    • From: AndrewWatt2000@a...
  • Re: Remembering the original XML vision
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Unicode and XML (was Re: Remembering the original XML vision)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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