Unicode and XML (was Re: [xml-dev] Remembering the original XML vision)

On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 09:19:32 -0800, Tim Bray <> wrote:


> Fair enough, but if you remove all the unicode-character apparatus from 
> XML 1.0 you probably cut that in half.  Which is one of the only 
> important *technical* differences between XML and SGML - SGML was really 
> underspecified on what a "character" was.  At the end of the day XML's 
> main technical contribution may turn out to have been that it dragged 
> Unicode into the mainstream.

Stupid question:  Why couldn't XML incorporate Unicode by reference rather 
than spending half of the spec defining the "unicode-character apparatus"?