Re: HTML 2.0 LAST CALL: Hyperlinking, Forms, Elements

lilley (lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk)
Fri, 2 Jun 95 06:14:52 EDT

Dan writes:

> In message <13824.9506012013@afs.mcc.ac.uk>, lilley writes:

> >Thus, either the text in 5.1 should be altered to read
> >
> >[...] selected Latin 1 characters [...]

> I'm going with this editorial change, rather than any technical change
> at this point, even though folks on www-html seem to think that &copy;
> and &reg; are already part of HTML 2.0. Ya'see, not all the named
> entities you suggest are currently supported, and it's a slippery
> slope where you draw the line.

OK, I accept that not all of them are currently supported. They are
unlikely to be supported in the future, though, unless there is some
indication that they exist!

I therefore propose that the additional entities be listed
in A.3 Proposed Features, section "Additional character Entities"

This avoids any changes to the Public text, but at least gives
developers an indication so they can start to support them.

I further propose that they be listed as a proposed entity list rather
than the simple tabulation curently used in "Additional character Entities"
which does not give the code positions.

If they are not listed, we could see vendors implement their own entities
which could mean, for example, later having to support &laquo; and &leftqt;
and &lguill; etc etc. We should supply the list, even if only in a
non-normative appendix.

> I am inclined to hold firm on any changes to the DTD,

I accept you do not want to change the Public Text of the DTD
and am happy to see the list I posted go into a non-normative
appendix under A.3 proposed features instead.

Dan, are you going to put my list in A.3?

> even for the much-needed internationalization improvements.
> An internationalization
> document is needed ASAP, but I am leery of letting I18N issues delay
> 2.0 any longer.

Dan, as you are well aware this has *nothing* to do with I18N or
internationalisation, Unicode, code positions >255, or any of that
stuff. It is about named entities for characters that are in ISO8859-1
and which all browsers already display. Also, it was not my intention
to delay 2.0.

-- 
Chris Lilley, Technical Author
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