Re: Blueberry/Unicode/XML

[James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>]

> Realistically, there are 3 options:
>
> 1. Leave it the way it is.
> 2. Do Blueberry and then repeat the process for Unicode 3.2
>    and 4.0 and so on every couple of years forever.
> 3. Bite the bullet, write the rules in terms of Unicode
>    metadata and go to a pure use-by-reference architecture,
>    probably adding a syntactic signal to reference the
>    Unicode version number.

I don't find any of these options very appealing.

Another bullet one could bite is to no longer make checking of name
characters (beyond what is needed to prevent ambiguity) a part of
well-formedness.  Whilst it's nice to have some sanity checking of names,
using inappropriate characters in names doesn't cause problems for further
processing layers to the same extent as other things that are part of
well-formedness do, such as unbalanced tags or duplicate attributes.

At least I think one should consider easing draconian error handling for bad
name characters to reduce deployment problems with option 2.

James