Re: A17: keep or drop entities?

At 03:10 PM 10/7/96 +0000, James Clark wrote:
>2b. Internal SDATA entities
>
>Given that we can have Unicode character references, and given that Unicode
>has a private use zone, and given internal CDATA entities, I don't think
>these offer any really useful functionality.  They also complicate the
>interface: with internal SDATA entities, you can't treat attribute simply as
>strings (unless you application maps them onto characters).

There is the problem, that I discovered following the pointer that you
provided me, that not all of the character entities have an equivalent
in Unicode. I've only skimmed over this issue so far, so I don't have
complete information, but I think it is still an issue.

I have absolutely no concept as to how this "private use area" of Unicode
will be exposed to the author, so the reference is lost on me, but if
a browser vendor wants to give customers complete access to all of the
Wingding or ZapfDingbat set for example, wouldn't it be easy to provide
customers with an add-on entity set?

If you do get rid of SDATA entities, then please provide a complete
set of mnemonic CDATA entities that expand to numeric character entity
references. Maybe that was understood, but I prefer to hear it
explicitly.

bob



Robert Streich				streich@slb.com
Schlumberger				voice: 1 512 331 3318
Austin Research				fax:   1 512 331 3760

Received on Wednesday, 9 October 1996 03:07:39 UTC