> I took a look at the ERCS (Extended Reference Concrete Syntax) page
> he posted, and it looks promising as a way to write SGML declarations
> for larger character sets. On the other hand it looks like
> ERCS is itself in draft status. It might make sense, if the
> working group agrees with the concept of using ERCS to support
> HTML over Unicode (and other character sets sufficently unlike
> Latin-1 that are subsets of Unicode), to try and put hooks for
> it in the main standard but write it up as another internet-draft/RFC.
>
> We've already got some of this, I'd guess a big issue is how the
> group feels about different SGML stuff for other character sets.
I am glad to see that there is still interest in making the World Wide
Web really World Wide.
Whenever someone posts a new proposal for handling non-Latin-1 character
sets, my main concern is that the practical implementation of this idea
would not force large sections of the non-(USA and W Europe) population
to do things in a radically different way to what they have now.
As I said last October
<http://gummo.stanford.edu/hypermail/www-talk-1994q4/0066.html>
> Put youself in other's shoes - how would you feel if the Web technology
> was all Japanese, say, and the instructions said something like:
> " To type a letter 'e', use shift control right bracket kanji-something.
> On keyboards without a kanji-something, refer to your manufacturers
> instructions. Pressing the letter 'e' on your keyboard will not work."
Whatever standard is agreed on, existing documents and practices should be
recognised and should be still usable as a sub-set of the global system.
> Has anyone actually looked at what Netscape is doing with
> character set support in their new version (I'm not in
> a position to judge the results.)
It is only in the Mac and PC versions, not the Unix version, so no I haven't.
> I'd suggest that a good critera for trying to put something
> in 2.1 is that it be modular and not drag in lots of side
> issues.
That sounds like an excellent suggestion. I am in favour of putting non-
contentious bits of HTML 3.0 out as 2.1 *provided* this is not taken as
license to argue 3.0 into obscurity for the next three years ;-). I want to
see 3.0 happen, really I do.
-- Chris Lilley +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Technical Author, Manchester and North HPC Training & Education Centre | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Computer Graphics Unit, | Email: Chris.Lilley@mcc.ac.uk | | Manchester Computing Centre, | Voice: +44 61 275 6045 | | Oxford Road, | Fax: +44 61 275 6040 | | Manchester, UK. M13 9PL | X400: /I=c /S=lilley | | /O=manchester-computing-centre /PRMD=UK.AC /ADMD= /C=GB/| |<A HREF="http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/lilley/lilley.html">my page</A> | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |This is supposed to be data transfer, not artificial intelligence. M VanH| +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+