Re: More entity confusion and my opinion on the right way

David Carlisle wrote:
> 
> Andrew
> > I include © in my source document, I get © in the result document.
> > 'Hooray!' I think to myself, this must mean that if I include an entity
> > reference to an ascii code, it will get translated to the right HTML entity.
> 
> James
> > Right.  That's what XT does when you use the HTML namespace as the
> > result.
> 
> Ah.
> 
> So going back to my `writing entities for mathml' question.
> 
> If MathML had a properly registered namespace set up and if
> there were a few special control characters that it would be nice to
> write out as entity references, such as some of the spacing control
> characters that MathML defines, would it be reasonable for an XSL
> processor to `know' this and just always write a certain character
> as for instance &NegativeThinSpace; rather than &#<some number> if
> writing to the MathML namespace.

If you're just producing a standalone chunk of MathML that's only going
to be processed by MathML processors, this would be quite reasonable.
One problem is how to declare these entities.  If the generated MathML
is only going to be processed by MathML processors, I guess it doesn't
matter.  If it's going to be processed by conforming XML processors,
then a DOCTYPE declaration will need to be added.  Are there canonical
system and public ids for the MathML DTD (one that includes declarations
of all the entities)?

This isn't really a good solution in the long term, because it won't
work when MathML is being embedded in XML documents.  The right
long-term solution is for MathML to allow elements to be used for this. 

James



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