[dsdl-comment] Re: Entities for XML

David

I note with dismay, but not with surprise, that once again a W3C
recommendation based on earlier and extensive work by ISO carries not only
no reference to the source of the material but no acknowledgement of where
copyrighted material has been stolen from. I certainly do not want my name
associated with such illegal activities.

I would not bother attempting to resurrect Part 13 of ISO9573 if this work
goes ahead. There seems no point in trying to push the standard through a
virtually defunct ISO committee that struggles to get any work approved
these days.

Martin Bryan

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Carlisle" <davidc@nag.co.uk>
To: <martin@is-thought.co.uk>
Cc: <member-math@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 4:48 PM
Subject: Entities for XML

>
>
> Martin,
>
> You'd probably given up on me ever resurfacing, but to bring you up to
> date with the current state of the entities work....
>
> For the drafts of MathML3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/mathml3)
> we have essentially deleted all the description of entity references and
> instead referenced a (non existing) separate document that defines
> those. We hope to have another draft or MathML3 out before the end of
> the year and plan to have a document describing the entities released at
> the same time.
>
> The plan is that this is a W3C Recommendation track draft with a working
> title of "XML Entity definitions for Characters". Unlike the MathML3
> drafts I plan to build the internal editors drafts in public (so you and
> other interested parties can access them) and there is already a draft
> at
>
> http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/2007doc/
>
> which is publicly reachable, but not announced or linked from
> anywhere. Once it is announced we can move discussion of it to the
> www-math@w3.org list which is open, until then I need to keep discussion
> on our internal list (cc'ed) to which only working group members can
> post.
>
> The document is (planned to be) an update to
>
> http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/iso9573-2003doc/9573.html
> except that was also available as pdf and you were co-editor.
>
> I'd hope still to re-start the ISO 9573-13 revision activity and have
> the final version of this document published (with essentially the same
> text and exactly the same entity definitions) as an ISO TR and as a W3C
> REC. I have just put my name at the top so far, but one reason for
> sending you this note now, before we announce this draft, is to ask
> whether you wish to co-edit either both versions or just the ISO version
> (assuming an ISO version is still possible).
>
> Comparing with the 2003 draft of iso 9573-13:
>
> I've removed almost all the introductory text (much of it came from the
> original version and is heavily SGML rather than XML based ("concrete
> syntax ....) Also I expunged all the comparative tables comparing these
> definitions with similar efforts, stix, html and docbook, as times have
> changed, stix proposal is now all incorporated in Unicode, and docbook
> no longer distributes its own entity definitions and just references
> theses. Probably I have cut out too much but this would be a first
> working draft, we can put some back later.
>
> The other change is that I have dropped the distinction between teh sets
> that came from the original SGML spec and those that come from MathML
> and HTML, and the draft just lists all the sets in one list. Again this
> is a working draft position which could change in the light of
> comments....
>
>
> The basic control file is, as before, unicode.xml but using a version
> updated to include all of Unicode 5, plus some additional characters
> that have been accepted into the Unicode "pipeline".
>
> http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/2007xml/unicode.xml
> (again this file is public but not yet announced)
>
> There are still some changes that need to be made to the definitions, to
> cope
> with recent Unicode changes, such as the addition of dotless j, I may or
> may not get some of these made before a first release.
>
> Just a comment on the delay (which may be relevant if we need to argue
> for restarting the stalled ISO activity on this) is to note that Unicode
> 5.0
> (last year) and the current Unicode pipeline
> http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html
> both have characters added to Unicode at least in part for the specific
> purpose of supporting these entity sets, so really it would have been
> premature to standardise definitions before these Unicode slots were
> available.
>
> Sorry this message is a bit long, but I wanted to make sure that you
> were fully in the picture _before_ we ask W3C if we can make a REC draft
> spec from these files.
>
> David
>
>
>
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