Re: [docbook] invalid characters for ISO-8859-1 response

[Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk>]

Anthony Ettinger wrote:
> On 10/31/07, Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk> wrote:
>> Anthony Ettinger wrote:
>>> I would rather not have special characters in my source -- opening the
>>> file with vi renders strange things.
>>>
>>> If it has to be a space, then it should be a literal space (in my
>>> opinion) -- why a reference to a utf-8 character that is then
>>> converted on the fly w/ xsl to the rendered space?
>>
>> Your definition of 'strange things' is possibly the visual
>> presentation of a Unicode code point mapped via an available
>> character set in your editor of choice.
>>
>> If you work it through from initial character generation
>> to glyph presentation, it is likely to be what you want...
>> hidden by the mysteries of non-ASCII characters.
>> That's why Unicode makes so much sense IMHO.
>> It removes the magic and ensures commonality
>> end to end.
>>
>>
>> Check it out!
>>
>> HTH
> 
> 
> I'm still confused though...why make a doc require UTF-8, when if I
> just typed it out there would be no dependency.

What you type, what bytes are stored, what code set is used
and what glyphset is available for the fontset in use by the
viewer you choose. They all impact 'what character' you see.

utf-8 makes sense of all that. XML doesn't require utf-8
but it does make sense. Think of it as sensible ASCII for C21.

regards



-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT, XSL-FO and Docbook FAQ
http://www.dpawson.co.uk