Why no ']]>' in CharData?

[Tony Graham]

At 28 Nov 1999 00:41 -0800, Don Park wrote:
 > >Even if you disallow existing encodings so that SML allows only UTF-8
 > >and/or UTF-16, you should still allow numeric character references so
 > >that you can represent any Unicode character even if you're creating
 > >SML data using Windows Notepad.
 > >
 > >If you consider that people won't create SML data and that machines
 > >will, then disallow numeric character references.
 > 
 > Tony, numeric character reference is still in.  I was just saying that
 > predefined character references like <, >, and & are there
 > for convenience only since numeric character references are there.

You did say they were in, but John Cowan suggested they should be out.

 > Not too many folks noticed it but I removed the hex numerical character
 > references in the preliminary EBNF.  I prefer hex but didn't like the
 > extra 'x' to get there.  I can go with either hex or decimal but not
 > both.

Take out the decimal and put back the hexadecimal.  I nearly said as
much in my previous post but I thought it was too obvious to mention.

Just about everything about Unicode characters -- from how the Unicode
Standard refers to them to how most computer languages represent them
-- is in terms of hexadecimal code values.  In my experience, even if
the encoding isn't Unicode, most specifications of character sets and
most ways of working with code values use hexadecimal character
numbers.

The only application that I can think of that absolutely requires
decimal code values instead of hexadecimal is the SGML Declaration
(and I don't think that you're going to surprise us with the SGML
Declaration for SML anytime soon).

Working with hexadecimal code values some of the time and decimal code
values some of the time is a real pain.  When the character set's
documentation uses hexadecimal code values, it's much easier if you
can enter hexadecimal code values in your data.

Regards,


Tony Graham
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Tony Graham                            mailto:tgraham at mulberrytech.com
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