Re: [xml-dev] XML Redux

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Kurt Cagle scripsit:

> The ^^ notation in N3 has always rather bothered me, if only because
> visually, the ^ character in text tends to blend in, but I also know that if
> programmers had their druthers all keyboards would include an additional 100
> non-alphabetic characters.

It's just maddening to think of all the symbolic riches of Unicode being
essentially out of reach because of the 101-key keyboard standard.  What
we need is the space-cadet keyboard, which had "shift", "top", and "front"
keys to generate different characters, and "control", "meta" (aka "alt"),
"super", and "hyper" keys to generate novel non-graphic characters.

Still, "^^" or something like it is really needed in order to extend the
type system, whereas metadata on an element will suffice for language tagging.

-- 
When I'm stuck in something boring              John Cowan
where reading would be impossible or            (who loves Asimov too)
rude, I often set up math problems for          cowan@ccil.org
myself and solve them as a way to pass          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
the time.      --John Jenkins