RE: [xml-dev] Re: XML element names (was: Ten Years Later - XML 1.0 Fift

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> This describes why prohibition of certain characters in names 
> (actually, person names as described in this article), can cause 
> certain people from not being able to use certain applications. I 
> think, the concepts of this article apply to XML names as well ...

Actually, I'm not entirely convinced by this. I think that XML names are
primarily for use within the IT system and do not need to have any direct
relationship to strings that are meaningful to end users. Mathematicians
have always been happy working with symbols in a foreign alphabet, and many
programmers don't seem to mind it either. While there's some sense of
fairness in allowing element names to use the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets
as well as Latin, there is also a danger to correct system functioning,
because you can't visually distinguish whether the A in <A> is Greek or
Cyrillic or Latin. 

(Perhaps there is a case for allowing names to use letters from any alphabet
but not allowing different alphabets to be mixed in the same namespace?)

Of course the problem of visual ambiguity also applies to end-user data as
well. If you see a car in the Balkans wth the registration APH 345 then it's
not immediately obvious what those three letters are...

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/