XHTML1: Appendix C.12 seems misplaced from Bjoern Hoehrmann on 2004-07-12 (www-html-editor@w3.org from July to September 2004)

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 06:13:53 +0200
To: www-html-editor@w3.org
Message-ID: <41851000.1817832154@smtp.bjoern.hoehrmann.de>

Dear HTML Working Group,

  Appendix C.12 in the XHTML 1.0 Second Edition discusses the use of
ampersands in HTML and XHTML, it says

[...]
  In both SGML and XML, the ampersand character ("&") declares the
  beginning of an entity reference (e.g., &reg; for the registered
  trademark symbol "®").
[...]

This seems to be an error, in HTML 4.01 the ampersand introduces an
entity reference if and only if it is followed by a name start
character, for example <p>&</p> is perfectly legal in HTML 4.01.

Further the entire section seems misplaced as it seems that it does
not define any guideline for XHTML authors who wish to deliver their
XHTML documents to legacy user agents. It seems the proper section for
this text would be Section 4, "Differences with HTML 4". Could you
please confirm that this is an error in the specification, or, if it
is intentionally placed there, state what the actual requirement is?

regards.

Received on Monday, 12 July 2004 00:14:37 UTC