Article:		Named Character Elements for XML
Subject:		Character entities are not needed
Date:		2003-01-08 04:45:45
From:		Lars Marius Garshol
What is really needed is better editors. That's all. If editors make it easy to enter and identify obscure characters the whole issue just goes away. And, frankly, I wish it would. Character entities are a pain, and I'm not at all convinced character elements are any nicer.

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• Character entities are not needed
  2003-01-08 07:07:15 Anthony Coates [Reply]
  
  I don't disagree with you, but we wanted to deliver a here-and-now solution. A lot of XML is still produced with vi and Notepad, and there is still a need to produce XML on systems that do not support Unicode. Cheers, Tony.
  
  
  • Character entities are not needed
    2003-01-12 21:07:52 Eric Schwarzenbach [Reply]
    
    I think a better here-and-now solution is to simply stop using weak editors like vi and notepad. There ARE plenty of editors that provide workable solutions for entering such characters. The way they provide it may not be perfectly convenient and optimal but they are workable, and no less convenient, I think, than choosing from a new set of character elements.

    
    Editplus or any of a dozen other notepad replacements would be one reasonable solution for a low budget PC environment.
    
    

  • Character entities are not needed
    2003-01-09 14:21:22 Lars Marius Garshol [Reply]
    
    As such I think it has merit, but, still, it doesn't hurt to try to look a bit further ahead. It would be good if people could start pestering their editor vendors for better solutions to this problem.