Re: For review: The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML

How about being consistent about writing 

	byte order mark

and not

	byte-order mark

since the former is the official form?

Leif Halvard Silli

Richard Ishida, Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:16:25 +0000:
> On 18/12/2012 22:57, Asmus Freytag wrote:
>> The text says
>> 
>> 
>>           What is a byte-order mark?
>>           
>> 
<http://www.w3.org/International/questions/new/qa-byte-order-mark-new.en.php#bomwhat>
>> 
>>     At the beginning of a page that uses a Unicode
>>     
>> 
<http://www.w3.org/International/articles/definitions-characters/Overview#unicode>
>>     character encoding
>>     
>> 
<http://www.w3.org/International/articles/definitions-characters/Overview#charsets>
>>     you may find some bytes that represent the Unicode code point U+FEFF
>>     ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP). This combination of bytes is
>>     known as a byte-order mark (BOM).
>> 
>>     The BOM, when correctly used, is invisible.
>> 
>> For a while now, there's been a formal name alias defined for the Byte
>> order mark, Actually two, if you count the abbreviation. (See:
>> http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/NameAliases.txt)
>> 
>> FEFF;BYTE ORDER MARK;alternate
>> FEFF;BOM;abbreviation
>> 
>> Section 4.8 of the Unicode Standard explains that these aliases are
>> designed (like the original character names) to be used as identifiers
>> (e.g. in specifications, regular expressions etc.).
>> 
>> With the introduction of U+2060 WORD JOINER, there's no longer a need to
>> ever use FEFF for its ZWNSP effect, so from that point on, and with the
>> availability of a formal alias, the name ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE just
>> represents baggage.
>> 
>> I recommend that the original name, if mentioned, be relegated to the
>> status of a historical footnote.
> 
> Sounds good to me.
> 
> RI
> 
> 
>> 
>> A./
> 

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2012 11:54:01 UTC