Re: Current Status of Discussion on RE/RS Handling

At 12:56 PM 9/27/96, Paul Prescod wrote:
>At 10:43 AM 9/27/96 -0400, David G. Durand"  (David G. Durand wrote:
>>   I like the consistency and simplicity of these rules, but the lack of
>>any way to have a "verbatim" element is a fatal flaw. Pandering to typists
>>is not a good idea, but removing useful functionality for the sole sake of
>>preserving compatibility is far worse.
>
>Isn't a verbatim element just text-entry convenience? Why should it be
>preserved instead of the ability to use newlines as formatting around tags?
>
> Paul Prescod

Yes, that is true, but on a practical note, I cannot see that we are
heading for wide acceptance if we rule it out. I was not the first on this
list to raise the issue of vebatim-style elements. This is not going to
help us make our case to the currently unconvinced. We are taking a common,
reasonable, well-established usage, and making it impossible, solely for
compatibility with a feature of SGML that isn't popular, easy to explain,
or widely understood.

   -- David


RE delenda est

--------------------------------------------+--------------------------
David Durand                  dgd@cs.bu.edu | david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science          | Dynamic Diagrams
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/    | http://dynamicDiagrams.com/

Received on Friday, 27 September 1996 13:52:27 UTC