- From: Dave Peterson <davep@acm.org>
- Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 21:13:00 -0400
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 9:33 AM 6/13/97, Tim Bray wrote: > The position I'm advancing is that XML do the same >deliberate abandonment of abstraction at the character level, >saying characters are indeed the bit patterns described in >Unicode, with the semantics and processing characteristics >described in Unicode, and that's all there is to it. It appears you don't understand what abstraction is. The characters are still abstract; you're just asking that all XML systems be required to use the same representation, at least at one point in their internal processing (i.e., the interface between their "XML processor" routine and their "application" routine). Furthermore, the representation you suggest makes sense only for character strings, not individual characters, since it represents some characters with a 16-bit bit combination and others with a 32-bit bit combination. like saying I'll represent small integers with one octet but larger integers with two, with no indication at compile time as to which to use. Duh. Specifying the internal representation for characters makes about as much sense as saying that the system *must* use twos-complement representation for negative integers. I've worked on systems that didn't even use the canonical representation for non-negative integers. Will they also be deemed unacceptable? Leave it up to the system designers. Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org
Received on Saturday, 14 June 1997 21:13:15 UTC