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Subject: Q: How do I use entities like – in DocBook V5.0?


http://kosek.cz/temp/dbng-howto.html#d5e446

"How do I use entities like – in DocBook V5.0?

Modern schema languages (including RELAX NG and W3X XML Schema) do not provide 
any means to define entities that can be used for easier typing of special 
characters. Some editors provide functions or special toolbars that allow you 
to easily pick necessary character and insert it into document as a raw 
Unicode character or a numeric character reference."

I'm having some trouble understanding exactly why these "modern" schema 
languages don't support character entity references.  It seems the 
expressiveness of XML should make providing that functionality easier.  In 
the case of MathML, it makes a lot of sens to use named characters entities.  
To some (significant) extent working with MathML by hand, and reading the XML 
adds to the intellectual value of the document model.  In addition, it is 
always a good idea to be able to fall back to a human readable form, and it's 
even helpful to have names for symbols such as 
LeftRighDoublArrow==hArr==biconditional.  when working with math, it make the 
most sense to call it a biconditional.  If you were just using it to be using 
it in a webpage, hArr, might make the most sense, and when trying to describe 
the symbol in terms of the category of symbols it belongs to according to 
shape and style, the longer name is useful.  People created these names for a 
reason.  I do not believe they are obsolete.  I hope we can find a way to 
port that aspect of the traditional DTD/SGML technology to the newer encoding 
languages.

Steven


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