A proposed solution for descriptions (was: Re: ISO 639 - New item approved - N'Ko)

[Mark Crispin]

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, John Cowan wrote:
> I should like to know whom it helps to include "’" in a
> plain-text document.

In the (still extremely frequent) circumstances where the literal string 
"’" is displayed, I would say that nobody is helped.

No &#x sequences should ever appear in an ASCII-only form; nor, for that 
matter, should ISO 8859-1 codepoints.  A Unicode form is a different 
matter; but then there should be no need for a &#x sequence.  Unicode 
forms should always be in a proper Unicode transport encoding (such as 
UTF-8).

Put another way, "death to &#x".

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.