Your comments on Character Model Fundamentals [LC010, LC049]

Dear Frank,

Many thanks for your comments on the 3rd Last Call version of the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals [1].  We appreciate the interest you have taken in this specification.

You can see the comments you submitted, grouped together, at http://www.w3.org/International/Group/2004/charmod1-lc/SortByOriginator.html#LC009
(You can jump to a specific comment in the table by adding its ID to the end of the URI.)

The following comment was accepted and edits were made along the lines you suggested. If you wish to say that you are satisfied or raise an issue, please reply to us within the next two weeks at mailto:www-i18n-comments@w3.org and copy w3c-i18n-ig@w3.org.
        LC049


PLEASE REVIEW the decision for the following additional comment and reply to us within the next two weeks at mailto:www-i18n-comments@w3.org (copying w3c-i18n-ig@w3.org) to say whether you are satisfied with the decision taken. 
        LC010

Information relating to these comments is included below. You will receive notification of decisions on remaining comments at a later date.

These comments relate to the editor's version at http://www.w3.org/International/Group/charmod-edit/charmod1.html

Best regards,
Richard Ishida, for the I18N WG




DECISIONS REQUIRING A RESPONSE
==============================

LC010
http://www.w3.org/International/Group/2004/charmod1-lc/SortByOriginator.html#LC010
Decision: Rejected We have taken the assumption that your comment asks for removing C048 to avoid problems with browsers such as Netscape 3.x and 4.x. Under that assumption, we have rejected your comment.

We would like to note that not only do these browsers not deal with hexadecimal character references, they are also very bad at dealing with character references in general according to the reference processing model. In particular, for Netscape 4.x, one has to label a document as UTF-8 in order for arbitrary (decimal!) character references to take effect. Given that very poor if not non-existent support for the very basics of the Character Model in those browser versions, we do not feel that it is appropriate to remove C048, which otherwise is undisputed. In addition, browser statistics (see e.g. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) show that the percentage of these browsers is declining steadily and has reached very low numbers.

We would also like to note that C048 is only a SHOULD, so this still allows the use of decimal numeric character references in situations where backwards compatibility with such kinds of browsers is really important, e.g. in intranet environments with very slow upgrade cycles.

Please note that the wording of C048 has changed to "Content SHOULD use the hexadecimal form of character escapes rather than the decimal form when there are both." to avoid saying anything about the relative preference of named character entities vs. numeric character references. But this should be only marginally related to your comment.




USEFUL LINKS
==============
[1] The version of CharMod you commented on: 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-charmod-20040225/
[2] Latest editor's version (still being edited): 
http://www.w3.org/International/Group/charmod-edit/charmod1.html
[3] Last Call comments table, sorted by ID: 
http://www.w3.org/International/Group/2004/charmod1-lc/

Received on Wednesday, 6 October 2004 10:35:04 UTC