HTML 4.01 -- 24 Character entity references

Gentlepeople,

I believe that the Proposed Recommendation of 24 August 1999 contains a
minor error of omission that is easily corrected.

In "24.3 Character entity references for symbols, mathematical symbols, and
Greek letters", virtually all Greek characters and symbols have been
provided with symbolic names.  However, there is one missing character that
is very important for texts pertaining to medicine and physics, namely the
"phi" symbol (how ironic, considering the birthplace of HTML, eh?).

Therefore, i propose the addition of the following character entity
reference:
 <!ENTITY phiv  CDATA "&#981;" -- greek phi symbol, U+03D6 ISOgrk3 -->
This name is consistent with prior SGML usage, and the symbol is included in
both the ISOgrk3 entity set (as "phiv") and the ISOgrk4 entity set (as
"b.phiv").

In a related, but much less important matter, is there any chance of
reformatting the tables in section 24?  IMHO, the tables would be more
useful if the "U+" and "ISO entity set" comments were moved to the beginning
of the <!ENTITY..> comments section, e.g.:
 <!ENTITY phiv  CDATA "&#981;" -- U+03D5  ISOgrk3  greek phi symbol -->
 <!ENTITY piv    CDATA "&#982;" -- U+03D6  ISOgrk3  greek pi symbol -->

Regards,
 Nik O, Teton Data Systems / Teton NewMedia, Jackson, Wyo.

References

[SGML]
 ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MISC/SGML.TXT

[Unicode]
 http://charts.unicode.org/Unicode.charts/normal/U0370.html

Received on Wednesday, 1 December 1999 19:44:27 UTC