Re: 14 Discourage the use of some or all name characters from XML 5e, Appendix J

My preference is C: no suggestions.  I just don't think A and B are of much
practical utility.  People don't randomly put together Unicode characters
to construct names; they choose words or abbreviations that are meaningful
in a language they speak.  If we were in the advice business, there is lots
of advice we could give about designing XML vocabularies that would be of
much more general utility than this.

James

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:48 AM, John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

> I think we should consider adding a sentence or two specifying characters
> whose use is discouraged in XML names.  Versions of this exist in XML
> 1.0 Appendix J, XML 1.1 Appendix I, and my old MicroXML draft, now at
> <http://ccil.org/~cowan/MicroXML-old.html>, section 6.
>
> Options:
>
> A: Add a non-normative reference to Appendix J, something like "The
> suggestions for constructing names in Appendix J of [XML] are also
> applicable to MicroXML."
>
> B: Add the first two suggestions, which are the main ones and are phrased
> positively directly, thus:
>
>     The first character of any name SHOULD have a Unicode property of
>     ID_Start, or else be #x5F LOW LINE (underscore).  Characters other
>     than the first SHOULD have a Unicode property of ID_Continue, or
>     be one of the characters listed in the table entitled "Characters
>     for Natural Language Identifiers" in UAX #31, with the exception
>     of #x27 APOSTROPHE and #x2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK.
>
> C: Make no suggestions.
>
> --
> There is no real going back.  Though I          John Cowan
> may come to the Shire, it will not seem         cowan@ccil.org
> the same; for I shall not be the same.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth,
> and a long burden.  Where shall I find rest?           --Frodo
>
>

Received on Monday, 24 September 2012 03:54:52 UTC