[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Steven T. Hatton wrote:

>>Why? Once MathML is read through XML parser by some mathematical
>>symbolic application this distinction is loss. 
> 
> 
> Not really.  \[NotExists] is ∄, \[Implies] is ⇒, etc.

XML parser will expand ∄ to a sequence of Unicode characters 
(and possibly also some markup) before handing in to the application. So 
with the support of good editor, you can type in Unicode characters 
directly in a way very similar to typing named entities.

> There are also problems such as whether what you see is a Greek omicron or a 
> Latin (English) 'O'.  These things matter in terms of querying presentational 
> XML, and in terms of interpreting content XML.

This is also application problem. If those characters have similar 
glyphs, your XML editor could show symbolic name of character instead.

> In MathML there are twenty tables of symbols similar to the table shown here:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/isoamsa.html
> 
> There are about 150 unique characters listed in that table. Perhaps there is a 
> way to represent the entire collection in a single symbol to be added to a 
> document, but simply adding the particular entities of interest is not an 
> option.

You can simply create small file that includes all these tables and then 
reference just this file from your internal subset.

> How is the editor supposed to know what entities are intended to represent a 
> particular character? 

There are zillion ways to implement it.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
   Jirka Kosek     e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz     http://www.kosek.cz
------------------------------------------------------------------
   Profesionální školení a poradenství v oblasti technologií XML.
      Podívejte se na náš nově spuštěný web http://DocBook.cz
        Podrobný přehled školení http://xmlguru.cz/skoleni/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Nejbližší termíny školení: XML schémata (včetně RELAX NG) 7.-9.11.
          *** DocBook 5.-7.12. *** XSL-FO 19.-20.12. ***
------------------------------------------------------------------

S/MIME Cryptographic Signature