[Bug 20702] New: Spec has started to fake the represenation of named character entities

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=20702

            Bug ID: 20702
           Summary: Spec has started to fake the represenation of named
                    character entities
    Classification: Unclassified
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
               URL: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-
                    content-0.html#named-character-references
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML5 spec
          Assignee: dave.null@w3.org
          Reporter: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
        QA Contact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-admin@w3.org,
                    public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org

ISSUE:

(A) In Working Drafts up until bug 1430 was solved, the spec had represented
the glyphs by using a numeric character reference.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-html5-20120329/named-character-references.html#named-character-references

  Example code, Aacute: <span class="glyph" title="">&#193;</span>

(B) But starting with Working Draft of 25th of October 2012, the spec has
started to fake it, by using self reference.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-html5-20121025/named-character-references.html#named-character-references

  Example code, Aacute: <span class="glyph" title="">&Aacute;</span>


CONSEQUENCES OF THE BUG:

* The glyph column becomes unreliable - in broken and legacy user agents,
unless the parser already has a correct implementation of the named character
references, one cannot trust that the character displayed is the inteded
character.
* Also, the WHATWG spec doesn't fake this way, and so WHATWG spec is more
reliable.

PROPOSAL:

* Either clarify that the glyph column is not normative. 
* Or go back to the old solution where the glyph is 
  referenced as a numeric character reference
* Or adopt the solution in the WHATWG spec, which 
  represents the glyph as normal (unescaped) characters

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Received on Friday, 18 January 2013 02:40:06 UTC