Re: [whatwg] notation for typographical uncertainty
ddailey wrote on 9/20/2009 7:43 PM: I'm saying to son: if you can't figure out what it says, type the characters you are sure about. Use '?' marks for the letters that you aren't sure about. You might consider using the Unicode Replacement Character, which is used by Unicode to replace an incoming character whose value is unknown or unrepresentable in Unicode: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffd/index.htm - Bil
[whatwg] notation for typographical uncertainty
Ya'll probably have dealt with this already but here is the usage case My son and I are are typing my recently deceased Dad's memoirs from the Manhattan project. I'm saying to son: if you can't figure out what it says, type the characters you are sure about. Use '?' marks for the letters that you aren't sure about. Ultimately this is ASCII with the most minimal of markup. Question: what markup will be least cumbersome (and hence most recommended) within a plain text document that may ultimately be converted (automagically) to HTML5, assuming, in the meantime, that we may stoop so low as to put it in HTML4. I know folks claim HTML5 will never break the web, but those folks and I have some beer to drink before we see eye to eye on that subject, having seen the web break so many times in the last 1.7 decades since I started playing with HTML at NCSA. Let us say I am a skeptic. cheers David
Re: [whatwg] notation for typographical uncertainty
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 8:43 PM, ddailey ddai...@zoominternet.net wrote: ... Question: what markup will be least cumbersome (and hence most recommended) within a plain text document that may ultimately be converted (automagically) to HTML5, assuming, in the meantime, that we may stoop so low as to put it in HTML4. I know folks claim HTML5 will never break the web, but those folks and I have some beer to drink before we see eye to eye on that subject, having seen the web break so many times in the last 1.7 decades since I started playing with HTML at NCSA. Let us say I am a skeptic. W3C has published HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 [1]. If I understand your question, I think that document will be helpful, particularly the sections on changed and absent elements/attributes. Avoid the absent elements and review the changed elements and you should be fine. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/ -- Chris Cressman http://chriscressman.com
Re: [whatwg] notation for typographical uncertainty
On Sep 20, 2009, at 8:43 PM, ddailey wrote: Ya'll probably have dealt with this already but here is the usage case My son and I are are typing my recently deceased Dad's memoirs from the Manhattan project. I'm saying to son: if you can't figure out what it says, type the characters you are sure about. Use '?' marks for the letters that you aren't sure about. Ultimately this is ASCII with the most minimal of markup. Question: what markup will be least cumbersome (and hence most recommended) within a plain text document that may ultimately be converted (automagically) to HTML5, assuming, in the meantime, that we may stoop so low as to put it in HTML4. I know folks claim HTML5 will never break the web, but those folks and I have some beer to drink before we see eye to eye on that subject, having seen the web break so many times in the last 1.7 decades since I started playing with HTML at NCSA. Let us say I am a skeptic. cheers David I'm rather confused about what your question is. Are you asking if you can use question marks as an ad-hoc markup for unknown characters? There's nothing in HTML5 that will break that usage, so that should be fine. But I don't think that there's been anything in the history of HTML that has gone so far as appropriating formerly legal characters for markup. Can you point to such an example? Is there a particular form of breakage that you are trying to avoid? HTML5 does obsolete a few features, though none that I think should be relevant to the use case that you provided, and it documents how browsers must render obsolete features which have worked in the past, so that features being made obsolete does not break anything that already works. If you can find examples in the draft of this not being the case, you should probably point those out. -- Brian
