L2/03-341 Source: Rick McGowan Date: 2003-09-12 13:26:00 -0700 Subject: UTR #31 statements regarding identifiers UTR #31 states: > ... > [XML1.1]. (In particular, the consortium committed to not allocating > characters suitable for identifiers in the range 2190..2BFF, which is > being used by XML 1.1.) If we're going to have such policies, we need to be explicit about them and document them on a publicly accessbile page that hangs off the "stability" page. That's one issue. But there's a more immediate issue. In fact, UTR #31 is *wrong*. As far as I can discover, UTC has *not* committed to that! No consensus or motion seems to have made that statement. In the minutes for UTC #89, we find: [89-C25] Consensus: The UTC supports the proposal for characters allowed in XML identifiers that is documented in section A of L2/01-454. And L2/01-454 states: If a range of character is to be excluded from identifiers to allow the use of future syntax characters, we recommend that those ranges be: 1. 0000..00FF* 2. 2000..203E 3. 2041..205F 4. 2190..27FF 5. 2900..2BFF Note the ranges very carefully: 2190..27FF and 2900..2BFF. This doesn't include Braille, which is 2800..28FF. That range is *NOT* included in L2/01-454, and thus is *not* included in the UTC consensus 89-C25. We need to amend UTR #31. Also, importantly, the current XML 1.1 draft says in section 2.3: [4] NameStartChar := ":" | [A-Z] | "_" | [a-z] | [#xC0-#x2FF] | [#x370-#x37D] | [#x37F-#x1FFF] | [#x200C-#x200D] | [#x2070-#x218F] | [#x2C00-#x2FEF] | [#x3001-#xD7FF] | [#xF900-#xEFFFF] [4a] NameChar := NameStartChar | "-" | "." | [0-9] | #xB7 | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] Which is quite restrictive and explicit; and does explicitly *exclude* the Braille characters 2800..28FF. But at this juncture, XML 1.1 doesn't mention UTR #31, and it appears that XML and UTR #31 aren't in sync either. Further, UTC #90 minutes state: [90-A2] Action Item for Mark Davis: Once again, forward to the W3C the Unicode proposal for characters to be used in XML identifiers. [L2/01-454] But there is no other related consensus, or policy decision. Rick