Re: HTML Character Representation/Transmission Model

lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)
Tue, 11 Apr 95 06:56:08 EDT

Lou Montulli wrote:

> On Apr 11, 12:37am, Glenn Adams wrote:

> > After considering the above, I think that overall, it is probably
> > best to specify a single document character set and to make that
> > character set ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993.

> > Further, one cannot specify that
> > all numeric character references refer to one document character set
> > (e.g., ISO/IEC 10646), and then specify another document character set
> > for the entity in which such references occur. At least one can't do
> > so and remain consistent with SGML.

> I agree with you up to the point of the specific universal character set.

Yes; once clearly explained, the concept of a single document character
set seems a clean and workable solution.

> The default character set must remain 8859-1 and numeric character
> references must continue to map to 8859-1, this has been the
> default since the creation of HTML and must continue to be the default.

Lou, I think I hear you saying there must be no nasty surprises and
numeric character references must continue to give the same printed
characters they did before?

Which, I gather, would be the situation if numeric character references
were to refer to 10646 because all characters in Latin-1 have exactly
the same code positions in Latin-1 and 10646, by design.

So, a change to the wording which had precisely no effect on current
documents but set us up better for the future would be a worthwhile
change, no?

--
Chris Lilley
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