Re: Parsing < and <

lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)
Mon, 24 Apr 95 06:30:35 EDT

Larry Masinter writes:

> [I wrote]

> > The numerical references, though, are just the same as typing in the actual
> > characters. You would only use < > if, for example, your keyboard
> > did not have the < > characters (which would be a royal pain for hand
> > editing HTML!)

> A recent quote from the SGML standard (from Glenn) seems to contradict
> this assertion. Please check your facts.

I checked, and I had got it wrong. Numeric references are treated just the
same as named entities, so it *is* impossible to hand edit HTML on a keyboard
that has no < > characters. Oh well.

The as I learn more about SGML, the less it seems an elegant solution and
the more it seems a mass of twisty little gotchas (like the `mixed content'
gotcha, for example). Is this just a phase in the learning curve, or is
SGML really like that?

--
Chris Lilley
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