Re: For review: The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML

On 18/12/2012 22:57, Asmus Freytag wrote:
> The text says
>
>
>           What is a byte-order mark?
>           <http://www.w3.org/International/questions/new/qa-byte-order-mark-new.en.php#bomwhat>
>
>     At the beginning of a page that uses a Unicode
>     <http://www.w3.org/International/articles/definitions-characters/Overview#unicode>
>     character encoding
>     <http://www.w3.org/International/articles/definitions-characters/Overview#charsets>
>     you may find some bytes that represent the Unicode code point U+FEFF
>     ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP). This combination of bytes is
>     known as a byte-order mark (BOM).
>
>     The BOM, when correctly used, is invisible.
>
> For a while now, there's been a formal name alias defined for the Byte
> order mark, Actually two, if you count the abbreviation. (See:
> http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/NameAliases.txt)
>
> FEFF;BYTE ORDER MARK;alternate
> FEFF;BOM;abbreviation
>
> Section 4.8 of the Unicode Standard explains that these aliases are
> designed (like the original character names) to be used as identifiers
> (e.g. in specifications, regular expressions etc.).
>
> With the introduction of U+2060 WORD JOINER, there's no longer a need to
> ever use FEFF for its ZWNSP effect, so from that point on, and with the
> availability of a formal alias, the name ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE just
> represents baggage.
>
> I recommend that the original name, if mentioned, be relegated to the
> status of a historical footnote.

Sounds good to me.

RI


>
> A./

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2012 10:16:51 UTC