[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date]

Re: [xsl] special character encoding, two problems


Subject: Re: [xsl] special character encoding, two problems
From: "Eliot Kimber ekimber@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:11:37 -0000

I can't restrain my own pedantry: the correct term is "numeric character
reference", not "numeric entity": http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-charref

Given that I think I'm the only person who ever uses the term correctly
and consistently, we probably should have just used "numeric entity" but
so it goes.

Cheers,

E.
bbbbb
Eliot Kimber, Owner
Contrext, LLC
http://contrext.com




On 10/23/14, 4:13 PM, "Graydon graydon@xxxxxxxxx"
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 08:39:11PM -0000, Jonina Dames jdames@xxxxxxxxx
>scripsit:
>> Thanks for the advice! The <xsl:value-of
>>
>>select="normalize-unicode(replace(normalize-unicode(.,'NFKD'),'\p{Mn}',''
>>),'NFKC')"
>> /> function works for most of the entities, but it's still missing a
>> couple dozen characters.
>
>Terminology pedant time --
>
>&#x00e9; is a numeric entity and exactly the same thing as C) just
>written differently.
>
>&eacute; is a named entity reference (which had better be defined
>somewhere)
>
>Either, as soon as the XML document is parsed, turns into U+00E9 in some
>internal representation and they're not different from each other or the
>representation for C) if someone had typed that directly in the utf-8
>input file.
>
>So when you say "entity" here I'm getting the nervous feeling that I
>don't know what you mean; can you provide some examples?
>
>> Some of the author names still have unicode entities instead of plain
>> ascii (for example, several characters with a stroke, several
>> ligatures, thorn characters, upper and lowercase). Is there a
>
>Well, examples would be good, but thorn, for example, &#x00FE; which is
>the self-same code point as C>, doesn't involve a modifier; it's one
>whole letter that doesn't exist inside ASCII.
>
>Stripping the modifiers -- which will give you e from C) if you decompose
>C) first, because then it's e + K
, which you could write &#x0065; +
>&#x0301; and it would be the same -- doesn't do anything because there
>is no modifier there, it's just the single code-point for thorn.
>
>> variation of this function or a parameter that will catch and convert
>> ALL of these to plain ascii, as well as the standard acute and cedil
>> characters? Or do I need to address these outlying characters with
>> something else (not translate, since I can't use a one-to-one
>> replacement for ligature entities)?
>
>ASCII, strictly, is seven-bit; there are lots of things you can't
>represent in ASCII.  &#x00e9; *is not* ASCII just because those eight
>characters all happen to be ASCII characters.
>
>So it sounds like you're trying to (either) map U+00FE, C>, to &thorn; or
>something like that (which is not, I cannot stress too much, ASCII; it
>might be an ASCII representation of a non-ASCII code-point, but it's
>still a non-ASCII code-point) or have C> decompose into t+h or something
>of that ilk.  (Which is at least actually ASCII.)
>
>Either way you'd have to use character mappings for those; there aren't
>any modifiers to remove.
>
>Are you really compelled to deliver seven bit ASCII?
>
>And, please, some examples.
>
>-- Graydon


Current Thread
Keywords