Re: participating communities (was XML Blueberry)

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> How is this different from changing Microsoft Word format, w

Quite. I thought open formats like XML were supposed to save us from
these things (or at least reduce the risk). I would never use Word for
any document I cared to keep for exactly this reason. I don't view my
XMl files the same way.

> But the EBCDIC mapping table correctly maps CR to CR, LF to LF, and NEL
> to NEL.  They have distinct functions on IBM systems: it's just that
> NEL is the plain text line ending character.
> 

If they really have different functions then IBM is better served by the
status quo, where you can have CR and NEL as distinguished characters in
XML data. In the proposal all NEL will be silently normalised away.

> To do what you suggest is to require there to be an XML-specific EBCDIC
> mapping table.

do any XML parsers really pick up a system wide EBCDIC table? If they
have their own mapping anyway I can't see any harm in this.

David

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