- From: Adam M. Costello <amc@cs.wustl.edu>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 23:04:27 GMT
- To: www-html@w3.org
Jim Taylor <JHTaylor@videodiscovery.com> says: > <!ENTITY emsp SDATA "[emsp ]"--=em space--> > <!ENTITY ensp SDATA "[ensp ]"--=en space (1/2-em)--> > <!ENTITY mdash SDATA "[mdash ]"--=em dash--> > <!ENTITY ndash SDATA "[ndash ]"--=en dash--> > > The fact that "em" and "en" are used for spaces but "m" and "n" are > used for dashes could be responsible for the confusion. In retrospect > it seems the authors of the SGML entities should have been more > consistent. (Does anyone know if they had a reason for doing it this > way?) I don't know if they had a reason, but I can see a reason: mdash and ndash are already pretty long. emdash and endash would be even longer. But msp and nsp look like they want to be pronounced "em ess pee" and "en ess pee". The dashes don't suffer that problem. I think I'd prefer consistency, but what is consistency in this case? Internal consistency, or consistency with an existing internally inconsistent spec? AMC
Received on Thursday, 11 July 1996 19:04:32 UTC