Re: ISO character entitties (was Re: Web Magazine featuring Accessibility issues)

aloha, chris!

thanks for your cogent explanation...

my only concern was that the importance of the semi-colon not be lost, and your
explanation only serves to reinforce the point....

thanks again,
        gregory.

Chris Maden wrote:
>[In reply to Gregory Rosmaita]
>Short answer: always use a semicolon.  It's always right and never wrong.
>What you tell your students is useful, and I don't see a need to modify it.
>
>But what I was saying to Leonard is that, per ISO 8879 (SGML), an entity
>reference can be ended with a semicolon or record end (RE, SGML's way of
>referring to the end of a line).  However, if neither is present, the
>parser will accept all of the name characters after the ampersand, and stop
>when it comes to something that isn't a name character.  Name characters
>are letters, numbers, the hyphen and the period.  In your example, AT&ampT,
>the name characters following the ampersand are a-m-p-T, so there is a
>reference to the undefined entity "ampT".  Many browsers incorrectly
>interpret this; Lynx is not among them.  But in a URL with ampersands,
>you're more likely to run into a non-name character such as = or " than you
>are to run into a semicolon or end of line.  Entity recognition will
>(properly) stop with those characters.
>
>-Chris

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He that lives on Hope, dies farting
     -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
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Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
   WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
        <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Thursday, 21 October 1999 18:23:33 UTC