- From: James David Mason <masonjd@ornl.gov>
- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 10:58:02 -0500
- To: Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie>
- Cc: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 09:18 AM 2/20/97 +0000, you wrote: >> An example (from "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN") >> (BTW I use the FPI to identify the document, not its location): > >:-) > >> There are about 100 such records in the file: >> >> <!ENTITY aacute SDATA "[aacute]"--=small a, acute accent--> >> ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ >> The fields underlined are not parsable in XML. > >Ewww. This hadn't dawned on me: comments in existing dtds and ent files. >In this case, it can be fixed with sed "s|--.*--||" but do we know if >the comments are an integral (ie compulsory) part of the ISO char ent >files? > >///Peter The comments are not mandatory -- they're just about universal, though. The source of these things is, of course, Annex D.4 of ISO 8879. And it's not just one file but quite a few in a typical installation. The annex is not normative text, but files containg this public text have been copied by almost every vendor (a quick look around my disk found copies from WordPerfect and Adobe/Frame and two copies from SoftQuad). There are further examples of this sort in ISO/TR 9573, Techniques for Using SGML. Given the near ubiquity of files that look lile the Annexes, maybe XML ought to reexaine the decisions on the things Peter points out above. (I, for one, think the "--* *--" delimiter is more junk to type -- and it makes me have to hit a shift key, too. I have enough sense to distinguish between when I'm typing text and use " -- " as an em-dash and when I'm typing code and putting in comments.) Jim Mason Dr. James D. Mason (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 Convenor) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Information Management Services SGML Systems Development 1060 Commerce Park, M.S. 6480 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6480 U.S.A. Telephone: +1 423 574-6973 Facsimile: +1 423 574-0004 Network: masonjd@ornl.gov http://www.ornl.gov/sgml/wg8/wg8home.htm
Received on Thursday, 20 February 1997 10:59:06 UTC