Re: Named character entities (was: XHTML2 MIME type)

Henri wrote on Friday, May 16, 2003 at 9:41:05 AM:

> Not supporting character entities in XHTML is not a bug in Opera if
> 1) XHTML is an application of XML
> and
> 2) XHTML user agents aren't required to use validating XML
> processors.

Actually, Opera Software internally decides what's a bug in Opera and
what's not. Whether or not they technically need to do something is
irrelevant; although I'm sure it's a consideration, there are
practical concerns as well.

> Do you classify TextEdit (bundled with Mac OS X) and WordPad
> (bundled with Windows XP) as "special advanced authoring tools"?

I've never used TextEdit. I'd hesitate to even call WordPad an
authoring tool, but perhaps the Windows XP version is different.

People make use of named entities daily, and you've not provided any
evidence that they're harmful; all you've proven is that the named
entities are redundant, which is obvious by their nature and stated
purpose. You haven't made a case for outright removal. The original
poster suggested they be made optional, which is something I'm okay
with since market forces will compel the major UAs to support them
anyway. As a practical matter, the major UAs already support HTML,
which means they support the named entities already, which means
there's little reason to not support them for XHTML (unless they're
removed).

-- 
John Lewis

Received on Friday, 16 May 2003 13:09:39 UTC