Re: [xml-dev] UTF-8+names

[Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>]

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

>>Of course it's cunningly designed to look like an architectural change,
>>that allows such syntax as: <&eacute;/>

Yow.  I hadn't thought of that.  (Hmm, somehow I missed David's message; 
xml-dev acting up again?)

> That is therefore an enormous processing model change.  This is way
> beyond surrogates. The potential for further disruption on this
> precedent seems downright boundless.

Hmm, it's just an idiotically simple filter that replaces a bunch of 
hardwired patterns with hardwired Unicode code points.  Hardly feels 
like a processing model change.

> I wrote a piece on XML as a disruptive technology a few years ago [1],
> but I can't say I expected XML to drill into the Unicode layer and
> modify the very notion of a character encoding.

UTF-8+names doesn't depend on XML, I can think of other applications for 
it.  Anyhow Unicode character encodings in widespread use have been 
cooked up by ANSI, ISO, JIS, and even Bell Labs (that's where UTF-8 came 
from).  The notion of inventing a new encoding to better serve 
application needs is hardly radical.  The bar to entry is that you have 
to have a clear and transparent mapping to Unicode code points, which 
UTF-8+names does.

-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray (http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)