Re: HTML 5 removed "numeric character reference" term - why?

On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:27:45 +0200, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> Well, in the parser they're all handled by the same state in the state
> machine, and in the syntax they are always allowed together. So if they
> had separate names, I'd always be saying "foo and bar" which is just a
> pain.
>
> I'd be happy to use the term "character escapes" or some such. But then
> I'm also happy to use the word "entity". So those of you who care about
> what this is called should decide on some term and let me know what to  
> put
> in the spec.

In my experience with discussing with authors, the most common name to  
refer to all three types of character escapes is "entities". The qualified  
de facto names are "named entities", "decimal entities", and "hexadecimal  
entities". Those are not the SGML/XML names, though. I don't know if we  
want to use the de facto names that authors use when discussing or the  
corresponding names of the SGML/XML equivalents. Either way, I will  
probably continue to use the former in discussions.

-- 
Simon Pieters

Received on Friday, 22 June 2007 09:42:37 UTC