Re: [xml-dev] Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

From
John Cowan <>
To
Date
2002-11-01T16:17:14Z
ID
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Thread
Re: [xml-dev] Character Entities: An XML Core WG View
David Carlisle scripsit:

> The names do change from time to time. the names of the lowercase phi
> characters changed at unicode 3 for example.

This is false.

What happened was that the non-normative *glyphs* (images) used for
U+03C6 GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI and U+03D5 GREEK PHI SYMBOL were
interchanged, to match normal modern Greek typographic practice.
When writing Greek you want the open phi, when doing mathematics
you want the closed phi.  Earlier printings of the Unicode charts
had erroneously showed them the other way around.

But the assignment of names to code values has *not* changed.

> Also this would of course be a _much_ larger predefined list of names
> for a system to carry around than a list based on the
> ISO/mathml/docbook/xhtml entities.

Quite so.

-- 
De plichten van een docent zijn divers,         John Cowan
die van het gehoor ook.                         
      --Edsger Dijkstra                         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan