Groups | Search | Server Info | Login | Register

Groups > comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html > #6581

Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2?

Show all headers | View raw

HTML scrawler wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Apr 2018 08:08:25 -0700, "David E. Ross"
> <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
[...]
>> You are trying to use numeric character references.  PLEASE DO NOT, even
>> if you use Unicode code point numbers (which you are not).
>>
>> Instead, use named character references (formerlly known as entity
>> references). ....
> 
> Hold on, are you saying that we shouldn't be using UNICODE in our HTML
> documents?

Or that we should not use PROSE in our texts? Please ignore the 
nonsense, as well as the trolling by Lahn. There is ignorance, and there 
is worse; ignore both if you can.

> I routinely use &#38; to put ampersands into text, e.g. "I went to the
> A&#38;P store and bought some tea." Are you saying that that shouldn't
> be done?

That’s a completely different issue. The reference &#38; denotes the 
Ascii apostrophe, which should never be used in English prose. It does 
not matter how you enter it. It’s just a wrong character. And there was 
never any reason to use the reference &#38; for it in text content (only 
in attribute values). So if your content has an expression in a markup 
language or a programming language, use their apostrophe (') as such 
without obscuring it. But don’t use it in prose, still less in poetry.

> I also tend to put in &#160; instead of &nbsp; for a non-breaking
> space. 

They are completely equivalent. Whether you use one of them instead of 
the no-break space character itself depends on the authoring 
environment. If your authoring tools can show no-break space differently 
from a normal space (say, using a colored rectangle), then why would you 
obscure things by not using the character itself?

> There are other UNICODE uses as well, including &#8212; which
> puts a long hyphen in text.

It’s not a long hyphen. It’s the em dash “—” used as punctuation 
character in some styles in English (mainly in the US) and in some other 
languages. Here, too, things depend on the authoring environment. If it 
can handle “—” well, there is no reason to obscure it, any more than we 
obscure the letter “A” in data by representing it as &#x41;.

-- 
Yucca, http://jkorpela.fi

Back to comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2018-04-06 08:08 -0700
  Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? "Jukka K. Korpela" <jukkakk@gmail.com> - 2018-04-06 18:52 +0300
    Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2018-04-06 21:37 +0200
      Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? John W Kennedy <john.w.kennedy@gmail.com> - 2018-04-06 23:00 -0400
        Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2018-04-08 01:43 +0200
    Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2018-04-06 12:42 -0700
      Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Gloops <gloops@zailes.invalid.org.invalid> - 2018-07-12 12:41 +0200
  Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2018-04-06 18:15 +0000
    Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2018-04-06 12:52 -0700
      Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2018-04-06 20:59 +0000
  Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? HTML scrawler <html@nowhere.invalid> - 2018-04-15 13:51 -0400
    Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? "Jukka K. Korpela" <jukkakk@gmail.com> - 2018-04-15 23:17 +0300
      Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2018-04-15 23:50 +0200
      Re: Numeric character references in W3C HTML 5.2? HTML scrawler <html@nowhere.invalid> - 2018-04-17 19:12 -0400

csiph-web