Re: fixed-length escapes

From: "Martin Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>
 
> ISO 2022 works on a different level than the escape sequences
> we are talking about. 

Great! A chance to air my pet peeve.

To "escape" a character means to allow it to be used with
a different significance.  So in C "\" is the delimiter character,
and "\\" is the escaped delimiter. 

In XML, the only escaping is provided by CDATA marked
sections (and perhaps by comments and PIs). In SGML, you 
could optionally have a "markup suppression" character that 
acted as an escape too.

An entity reference is not an "escape".   To keep on calling
it an "escape" loses a valuable distinction, and can only
promote confusion, because it lumps together references
and real escapes.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

Received on Saturday, 13 July 2002 02:30:28 UTC