Attribute generalization: escape character?

WRT "Attribute generalization"
in ditaspec:

How is an attribute generalized if its
value contains a parenthesis?  Using the example in this section,
what if instead of

  jobrole="programmer"

I had

  jobrole="programmer(s)"

or some other literal string that contains
parentheses?  Presumably there is a mechanism to escape it during
generalization and unescape it during respecialization.  This mechanism
isn't described in the spec.

My followup question is how does a generalizer
distinguish generalization of the fully-specialized

  jobrole="programmer(s)"

where the parentheses are real parentheses,
and the partly-generalized

  person="jobrole(programmer)"

where the parentheses are bracketing
the actual value of the specialized attribute "jobrole"?  It
seems that the generalization process needs to know that jobrole is specialized
from person even when the partial generalization from jobrole to person
has already been done, which appears to defeat the purpose of generalization
somewhat.

-- 

Deborah Pickett