Re: Comments on June 8 draft (long)

Glenn Adams (glenn@stonehand.com)
Thu, 15 Jun 95 09:35:47 EDT

> In message <9506141838.AA00109@trystero.art.com>, Joe English writes:
>
> >2.2.1. Data Characters, p. 8:
> >
> >| Note that the terminating semicolon is only necessary when the
> >| character following the reference would otherwise be recognized
> >| as markup:
> > ^^^^^^
> >
> >Should read "would otherwise be recognized as part of the entity name".
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Same difference. I'll pass on this one.

I gotta agree with Joe on this one ... it is not the same difference.

I concur with Joe and David. The text from 8879, 9.4.5, says:

"The refc or RE can be ommitted only if the reference is not followed
by a character that could occur in the reference, or by a charracter
that could be interpreted as the omitted reference end."

The general problem here is that you are attempting to paraphrase 8879
as you do in other places in the text. This is the dangerous in that it
may introduce alternate interpretations of the lexical behavior as required
to remain SGML conformant.

I would suggest either (1) changing your text to read "would otherwise be
recognized as markup as described in ISO 8879, Clause 9.4.5, Reference End.";
or (2) simply using the text from 8879. The first is preferable in my
opinion since it makes it easier to track changes in 8879 in future versions
of the HTML which are based on revisions to 8879.

Regards,
Glenn Adams