[whatwg] HTML5 named entity ≫ and ≪

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2011, Mike Samuel wrote:
>
> The table in section 12.5 (
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/named-character-references.html
> ) says
> > GT;    U+0003E        >
> > Gt;    U+0226B        ≫
> > gt;    U+0003E        >
> > GT     U+0003E        >
> > gt     U+0003E        >
> 
> which I believe means that ">", ">","&GT", and "&gt" all encode
> ">" but "≫" encodes U+226B MUCH GREATER-THAN.

Correct.

 
> Similarly
> 
> > Lt;    U+0226A        ≪

Correct.


> This is a potential source of confusion for naive HTML entity decoders 
> fall-back to case-insensitive matching when there is no mapping for a 
> given entity name.

Such decoders are non-conforming.


> MathML already has other succinct mappings for U+226A (≪) and U+226B 
> (≫).  Could HTML5 avoid confusion by deprecating ≪ and ≫ in 
> favor of ≪ and ≫ or remove them entirely?

The mappings in the HTML standard are actually the MathML mappings. We 
literally use the same database they do to automatically generate the 
mapping in the spec.


On Wed, 14 Dec 2011, Ilhan Y. wrote:
>
> By the way, can we have Unicode names (HTML names) for Mercury, Sun, 
> Earth and other planets. They are used by many astronomers on the 
> internet.

The named character references used in HTML are just those provided to us 
by the MathML working group, so if you actually want a change here, I 
recommend contacting that group. In general though I doubt we will add 
more names. It's gotten rather out of hand.


On Wed, 14 Dec 2011, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 
> After all, there is no rationale given for the inclusion of new “named 
> character references,” so people might see the idea as asking authors 
> to submit new proposals for every possible and impossible character.

The rationale is compatibility with deployed MathML content.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'