RE: A note on case sensitivity

At 11:08 28/10/96 -0500, Gavin Nicol wrote:

>This is why I suggested ISO 10646. using this we should be able to
>do something like:
>
>  <XML>
>  <DIV LANG="en.uk">
>  &english;
>  </DIV>
>  <DIV LANG="ja">
>  &japanese;
>  </DIV>
>  <DIV LANG="zh">
>  &chinese;
>  </DIV>
>  </XML>
>
>and even if the entities are in different encodings, parse, and
>process the document.

Exactly what I would like to do with one little extra, I would like (in an
ideal world) to be able to have different namecase rules for each entity
rather than have them share SGML declarations. I don't expect to get that in
XML 1.0, or in any version of HTML this century, but would like people to
bear it in mind as what we need to think of if we are ever going to develop
an SGML-based solution that will work for multlingual compoud documents on a
world-wide scale.

Incidentally, to say this is all pie-in-the-sky is not the answer. I am
reading a book on language development at present that has 74 sections, each
written by a different author/set of authors, that cover different sets of
languages, from heiroglyphics through to languages used only in remote areas
of Indonesia. I would love to be able to search this as an electronic
reference work to try to identify the relationships between languages
better, but at present there is not electronic system that could cope with
searching text of this complexity. Until there is the much muted Information
Age will not replace the Age of the Printed Word in which I was happily
brought up and in which I expect to finish my life!
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.u-net.com/~sgml/

Received on Monday, 28 October 1996 15:11:21 UTC