xml-dev - Re: SDATA or UNICODE

[Chris Maden <crism@ora.com>]

[Arjan Loeffen]
> As far as I can see there is no character (Dutch) FLORIN SIGN or
> EURO SIGN in unicode (yet). Suppose I need to specify that
> character; in the old SGML days I simply referenced system data
> SDATA for euro or florin; the receiving system should be able to
> cope with that, and it was true data supplied by the system,
> i.e. could be interpreted as a character (sequence). It seems
> incorrect to replace it by a data entity or special element, as in
> both cases the result would not be interpreted as a character, but
> of a data object/element.
> 
> In other words, how do I specify my small salary in euro's?

Most listings of the Mac and Windows character sets, both of which
include the florin sign, use

<f2>    /x01/x92        LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK

for the florin sign.  As Henry Thompson has pointed out, /x20/xac has
been allocated for the new Euro glyph[1].

But currency is only a small part of your worries.  There are a lot of
symbols, especially scientific and technical ones, that aren't
represented in Unicode.  I'm not particularly sanguine about this, but
I've accepted a minimal XML for now.  We can add SDATA or something
similarly useful later.  People who have characters beyond it will
have to use SGML for now, and come up with some conversion mechanism
(probably involving private use areas - yuck).

-Chris

[1] Yes, glyph.  The EC has seen fit to mandate a glyph for the new
currency, like they did for the little 'e' on beverage bottles.
-- 
<!NOTATION SGML.Geek PUBLIC "-//Anonymous//NOTATION SGML Geek//EN">
<!ENTITY crism PUBLIC "-//O'Reilly//NONSGML Christopher R. Maden//EN"
"<URL>http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/crism/ <TEL>+1.617.499.7487
<USMAIL>90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA" NDATA SGML.Geek>

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