- From: Dave Peterson <davep@acm.org>
- Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 12:09:37 -0400
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
Let's be realistic. There *will* be cheap 8-bit-internal XML systems. There *will* be 16-bit-internal systems. There may be 32-bit-internal systems. There may even be non-canonical-internal (e.g., shift-JIS) systems. I doubt that XML will prescribe that it is illegal to have an XML system that cannot represent (and display, else why bother representing) all the Eastern character sets. Therefore.... A question we need to address is: "What should an XML system do when presented with a numeric character reference for a character for which it has no internal representation?" A second question we should be asking is: "Should XML permit numeric character references using non-SGML (i.e., undefined in the document character set parameter) character numbers?" This determines just how one should write the document character set parameter for XML's SGML declaration. Note: If they are permitted, how is the system to know how to handle (e.g., display) them? How will it "know what the characters are"? A related question that SGML generally has to think about, but which impacts XML is: "What character is referenced by a numeric character reference using a defined-in-the-document-character-set character number which is defined to be a "character" represented in a base character set by a code point that the base character set specifies to be undefined?" Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org
Received on Saturday, 12 April 1997 12:11:04 UTC