RE: Paragraph and line separators

Ernest Cline wrote:
> 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.
> [...]
> 2) No document type based on XML should use these characters to 
> indicate paragraph and line boundaries.
> [...]
> Which of these is the preferred interpretation of this part of the 
> note? Why is it the preferred interpretation?

The latter, IMHO.  One reason is that PS and LS are meant for plain text
formatting.  They can be used to "pretty-print" XML source just like CR and
LF in their various combinations are.  As John Cowan just pointed out, XML
1.1 folds PS into an LF to effect that.  Giving markup meaning to PS and LS
would in a sense override their plain text meaning.

Another reason (unrelated to NOTE-unicode-xml) is that they are not
containers like elements but just delimiters.  Unlike some other Unicode
formatting characters like the bidi ones, they cannot unambiguously be used
to indicate containment.

-- 
François Yergeau

Received on Monday, 7 April 2003 14:14:41 UTC