Re: language hints in code stream vs. SGML markup

Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Fri, 20 Jan 95 16:39:16 EST

>Language doesn't shift on a character by character basis. It does
>shift on a section-by-section basis if it shifts at all. It doesn't
>make sense to support <german>multi</><french>ling</><english>ual</>
>words on a character-by-character basis.

Ah, but there *are* cases where character by character disambiguation
might be needed (especially in comparative texts).

My recent proposal is more biased toward the SGML-level tagging, and
only uses the Private Area Codes to delimit the tags (quite legal).
The benefit is that one can then unambiguously distinguish hints at
the lower levels if one so desires.