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David Carlisle wrote:
>>You're partially right, < is defined by old-fashioned (SGML-based)
>>HTML but it's *not* defined by XHTML or MathML. That's because it's
>>wired into XML so XHTML gets it for free. So it is *definitely* not
>>defined in UTF-8+names, and the I-D should say that.
...
> Either way it should be made clarer. I think that for apos and quot
> at least my reading would be more useful as these would then expand to
> the characters which means they are useable in non xml contexts.
Well, there's no doubt that +names is optimized for the needs of XML
users, in that it defines lots of things like &eacu; but *doesn't*
define the XML magic 5; this means that < and & and so on go
through untouched, which is what you need for the purposes of XML users.
For the purposes of XML users, +names really needs to not define <
and & to be useful for them. Not defining ' and " and
> is not crucial but it's certainly handy. I would argue that for
most non-XML-users, having these things passed through untouched isn't
really a problem, because normally these are not characters you need to
escape except in the case that you plan on using the text in XML.
That is to say, I can see non-XML applications finding it handy to be
able to say "Martin Dürst said so." but I don't see a common use
case for "Clearly in this case Ir < Is", unless you're headed for XML.
So I think the current behavior - not replacing the magic five - hits a
sweet spot. -Tim
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