[xsl] Named character references (Was: preseving character entities)

[Geert Josten <Geert.Josten@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

(LIGHTBULB)

Rereading the (previous) thread, I re-noticed Davids remark that the term "named character 
references" came from the SGML world.

I was confused about it the first time as I _really_ thought that I had just read the term 
(literally minutes ago) on the HTML 4 rec page and had seen use of the term in the way I intended on 
mailing lists before. But I must punish myself for having misread the HTML rec on entities as it is 
talking about "named character _entities_" and the users on those mailing list that used that term 
wrongly should be punished for misleading me. 8|

Scrolling down the Google search result, I notice a remark about SGML named character references 
being things like &#SPACE;. David, if you just would have said that the term I used was referring to 
those kind of thing (by example), I wouldn't have been puzzled that much and wouldn't have had to 
bother you about it.. :P

As I wanted to achieve terminology that clearly define what one means, irrespectively whether a 
person is talking about SGML, XML, HTML or XHTML, I conclude this was not a good proposal. Even 
though, as David more or less sais himself, the SGML term is not commenly used these days any more 
and the actual confusion I caused in his mind (and would cause in mine from now on) is not likely to 
occur in minds of people who are not familiar with SGML. ;)

But after this lengthy thread, there still remain (official) terms that cause confusion as well. :-S

The actual point I tried to make is that people are using the official terms not very carefully and 
what I intended with my proposal was to encourage a more explicit way of telling what you mean. So 
instead of saying "entity reference", one could say "named character entity" (not "reference" ;) and 
instead of "character reference", one could say "numeric character reference". It is unlikely that 
people mistake the words 'named' and 'numeric', so if in future a person would start talking about 
'numeric character entities', it is still clear that the person is actually talking about character 
references. While if a person posts a message to this list and starts talking about "character 
entities", at least a hand full of us gets confused whether he really means entities or (numeric) 
character references...


Phew.. Now I can finally sleep again... ;)


By the way, I don't recall the initial poster to have clearified himself on his meaning. Though I 
suspect that he meant character references as he seemed (more or less) happy with the us-ascii 
solution...


Cheers,
Geert