Entities names?

"Chris Wendt" <christw@microsoft.com> wrote on Fri, 22 Aug 1997 11:58:38:

> [..]
> I haven't seen any proof for the added "convenience" of adding more and more
> named entities. In the contrary this slows down the parser (you need to
> search a huge table) and transmission size (each character takes more bytes
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> than any other known document encoding).

Search a huge table? Search?!? What about using a hash lookup for 
entities if speed is a concern?

  character := entityTable[ hash(entityName) ]

Certainly the computing time to calculate a hash of several 
characters to calculate an index in a table is minimal enough not to 
degrade from performace, unless a document is filled with hundreds of 
entity names.

As for the extra size issue, the added characters for entity 
references is insignificant.

I favor source readability (even if I am using special software to 
create a web page) over brevity.

Side question: will PNG images be added to MSIE so they can be 
included using <IMG> or does one have to rely on plugins and the use 
of <OBJECT> which is handled in a buggy manner by most browsers 
(enough to make me avoid using it for years).

Rob
---
Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl (wlkngowl@unix.asb.com)
(Se habla PGP.) http://www.wusb.org/mutant/

Received on Friday, 22 August 1997 18:26:10 UTC