Paragraph and line separators

Recently there has been discussion on the www-html list about whether 
making use of the paragraph and line separator characters U+2029 and 
U+2028 instead of <p> and <l> elements in XHTML2 would be a good idea.  
One argument against the use of separators is based on:

  http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-unicode-xml-20020218/#Line

However, the strength of that argument depends upon how that section is 
to be interpreted.  Two differing interpretations have been put forth 
by those in favor of the proposal and those opposed.  These lead to 
different resolutions of this proposal. These are as follows:  

1) The separator characters are acceptable for use in document types 
that are aware of these characters and do not use markup to indicate 
paragraph and line boundaries.  If markup is available in a document 
type to indicate paragraph and line boundaries, then markup should be 
used and not the separator characters.  If markup is not available, but 
the document type is not aware of the existence of these characters,  
then the use of these characters could cause problems, but they should 
be treated as at least whitespace in such a context.
   Therefore, while the use of the separator characters in XHTML2 to 
indicate paragraph and line boundaries is a possibility, such use 
cannot coexist with the use of markup and XHTML2 must use only one of 
the two approaches. Which approach is the better approach should be 
decided upon another basis.

2) No document type based on XML should use these characters to 
indicate paragraph and line boundaries. If such a distinction is to be 
made, then markup must be used.
   Therefore, the use of the separator characters in XHTML2 to indicate 
paragraph and line boundaries is not a possibility, and XHTML2 must use 
markup such as <p> and <l> for this purpose.

Which of these is the preferred interpretation of this part of the 
note? Why is it the preferred interpretation?

Received on Monday, 7 April 2003 11:57:59 UTC