- From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 22:05:24 +0200
- To: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
- Cc: "Richard Ishida" <ishida@w3.org>, "GEO" <public-i18n-geo@w3.org>
On Friday, July 1, 2005, 9:21:01 PM, Bjoern wrote: BH> * Richard Ishida wrote: >>http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes.html BH> I think the document should note that using "character entities" is BH> not interoperable and possibly dangerous. Yes. BH> The HTML Working Group has BH> been approached several times to clarify whether and how BH> implementations are supposed to support the pre-defined entities if BH> they do not read the external subset; Which is optional, per the XML spec BH> the HTML Working Group so far BH> refused to provide such clarification, The XML spec seems fairly clear on that point BH> so there are a number of old BH> implementations that do not support use of them in XHTML documents BH> at all (to the extend that some implementations incorrectly reject BH> documents that use them) do they fetch the external DTD subset where these entities are defined, or not? If not then they are undefined entities. BH> and current implementations that support BH> them for some document types but not for others. BH> Also note that per XML 1.0 Third Edition, BH> It is [A violation of the rules of this specification] if an BH> attribute value contains a reference to an entity for which no BH> declaration has been read. [Conforming software MAY detect and BH> report an error and MAY recover from [this error]]. All of which, as you say, means hat using them is non-interoperable. NCRs, us just plain using the regular characters instead, is much preferable. Entities in SGML date from a pre-Unicode time where assuming anything beyond ASCII was non-interoperable; that is not the case today. BH> So to the extend that it is possible to have some kind of XHTML document BH> that uses "character entities" in attributes but the user agent does not BH> support the document type and/or did not process the entity declaration, BH> it is perfectly permissable for the user agent to act in unexpected ways BH> for the document. Yes. BH> Robust documents do not use "character entities" at all unless they BH> are pre-defined in XML 1.0 or declared in the internal subset. Agreed. BH> The document should also link to the relevant requirements in Charmod BH> Fundamentals. -- Chris Lilley mailto:chris@w3.org Chair, W3C SVG Working Group W3C Graphics Activity Lead
Received on Friday, 1 July 2005 20:05:32 UTC