Re: problems with identifiers and keywords...

>For example, SGML put markup in <> delimiters (whence HTML and now XML
>does the same). However, SGML recognized that < and > might be useful
>in text and allowed one to use some notation I forget to change the
>delimiters.


This general problem has annoyed me for a long time. I always thought
that a wise thing to do when ucs-4 and utf-8 character encodings came
into general use would be to define an arbitrary "NTD" (non-text
delimiter) character value and give it an arbitrary glyph not found in
any real natural language or in mathematics.


What about the "empty box" that some text rendering tools use when
they encounter a character value that the current font has no glyph
for? Is that used anywhere naturally? Maybe make it half-width, an
upright rectangle instead of a square, to fit better in text-mode
console fixed size glyph boxes.


(The idea is to take the ambiguity out of embedded markup tags by not
overloading the tag delimiter character value, thus simplifying the
parser.)


While the potential use in markup languages is obvious, what would one
use something like this for in an interpreted language or in byte-code
(if anything)?


Regards,


Clayton Weaver
<mailto: cgweav@aol.com>


"Everyone is ignorant, just about different things." Will Rogers

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.