Re: [CSS21][css3-namespace][css3-page][css3-selectors][css3-content] Unicode Normalization

Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
> I confess that I didn't really understand that message at the time. So 
> I've just re-read it, and also looked up some MARC21-related 
> materials. Now I'm ready to say that I disagree with this position.
LOL, i'd agree with your disagreement.
>
> The web developer who is developing processes that depend on a 
> particular normalization form, whether NFC, NFD, or some other custom 
> transformation, must face that burden anyway. Otherwise the process 
> will never be robustly interoperable with the wider world of encoded 
> text.
>
In theory, and on internal projects this is how we handle all our stuff. 
But i do think you're overestimating the knowledge of the average web 
developer.

> We may wish this burden didn't exist at all, but it does (and won't be 
> going away any time soon -- Unicode is here to stay). And software 
> developers -- rather than web page and stylesheet authors -- are the 
> right people to carry that burden.
I'd partly disagree.

There are tools out there that allow developers to handle normalisation 
in a flexible manner.

There are tools out there that allow developers to handle normalisation 
in an inflexible manner (enforcing a particular normalisation form).

Many tools do handle normalisation.

I doubt it will be possible to get all software developers to take it on 
bored.

Ultimately a web page author or stylesheet working with multiple 
languages, needs to know what their tools actually do, as a bare minimum.

And I'd except much more knowledge from our internal web developers.


Andrew Cunningham
Senior Manager, Research and Development
Vicnet
State Library of Victoria
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Melbourne VIC 3000

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Email: andrewc@vicnet.net.au
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Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2009 00:43:34 UTC