Re: Problem: incompatible handling of svg files

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Tuesday 17 October 2006 03:13 pm, Hans-Bernhard Br=C3=B6ker wrote:

> >> See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-references
> >
> > I understand. The specific question remains as to whether the XML
> > tag "encoding=3D'foo'" at the head of a document is mandated to apply
> > or not apply to octal/hex constants.
>
> What you call octal/hex constants, XML calls a "character reference".
> And the paragraph of the XML spec the URL above points says quite
> straightforwardly that such references specify a Unicode code point.

Thanks. You are better at reading that convoluted text than I am.
I had thought it gave an example of redefining all these codes based
on the encoding, but on closer inspection I now see that the example
pertains specifically to "entity references" in distinction to
"character references".

> It boils down to this question: do we treat SVG like TeX, or like any
> other dumb format?  In the former case, we should document that & is
> an escape character in text strings that go to the SVG driver.  It
> may even be necessary to offer quoting & characters (so the above
> would become "\&#x21d2" or '&#x21d2').

Indeed.  It is further complicated by the fact that the & character
is used in gnuplot's enhanced text mark-up.  That isn't an issue
for TeX, but it is for SVG.


=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA