INTERNET-DRAFT Expiration date: September 2002. Network Working Group C. Kostin Request for Comments: nnnn Category: Standards Track Date: March 2002 Language property for symbolic name notation draft-kostin-language-property-00.txt) Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 (in spite of this section is so large that I, probably, even have not yet entirely read it). Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html ________________________________________________________________________ Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. ________________________________________________________________________ Abstract (Standard Backus-Naur Form (BNF) is used hereinafter.) This document describes an enhancing of the way of presenting characters in HTML by symbolic names "&;", by adding to the symbolic name an optional language property in the following manner "&[-];". Kostin Standards Track [Page 1] RFC NNNN Language property for symbolic name notation March 2002 ________________________________________________________________________ Introduction Dear Sirs, It seems likely that method of encoding characters in operating systems becomes more and more similar to symbolic name method implemented in HTML by notation &; (see ref. [1] below) (notation, probably, originated from SGML (for SGML, see ref. [3] below)). Especially this process becomes apparent in UTF-8 sequences. At the days of writing this document the symbolic name is not yet become a method of operating systems. Probably, the way for implementing this method inside operating systems lies over prior trial in HTML. This document describes (1st step on the way) an enhancing symbolic name notation by adding to it an optional language property which must show which language an encoded character belongs to. ________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 1 - Notational conventions. (001.001.001.0001 - Chapter 1, division 1, section 1, paragraph 1) A standard Backus-Naur Form (BNF) notation is used in this document. <...> - means that enclosed expression is a definition of some element. [...] - means that enclosed expression is an optional element. {...} - means that enclosed expression is repeated 0 (zero) or more times. - defines left angle bracket i. e. "<". - defines right angle bracket i. e. ">". - defines left square bracket i. e. "[". - defines right square bracket i. e. "]". - defines left brace i. e. "{". - defines right brace i. e. "}". ________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 2 - Language property for symbolic name notation. (002.001.001.0001 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 1) This document introduces an optional language property for symbolic names, the names by which characters are encoded in HTML (see ref. [1] below). The language property is a short name of a language which specifies what a language the character encoded by a symbolic name belongs to. The language property is composed of ASCII characters only (for ASCII, see ref. [4] below), added after specified symbolic name separated from the symbolic name (or another character property) by the hyphen (minus) "-" character. Kostin Standards Track [Page 2] RFC NNNN Language property for symbolic name notation March 2002 (002.001.001.0002 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 2) BNF sample: &[-]{-}; The language property is, as mentioned above (paragraph 1, abstract, introduction), optional parameter. (002.001.001.0003 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 3) Exempli gratia: "&e-lat;&x-lat; &g-lat;&r-lat;&a-lat;&t-lat;&i-lat;&a-lat;" - defines Latin expression which, probably, means "for example"; "&p-serb;&a-serb;&r-serb;&k-serb;" - defines Serbo-Croatian word which means "a park". (002.001.001.0004 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 4) It is supposed that folks choose short words to name languages and that the list of chosen languages names is permanently opened for reading, copying, distributing, and adding a new language name. (The last is rather with few restrictions.) Please, take into consideration that this document doesn't contain any list of languages names. (002.001.001.0005 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 5) An example of the languages names list. bopo - Bopomofo en - English en_US - English, American kling - Klingon language lat - Latin slav_old - Old Slavonic/Slavic rus - Russian serb - Serbo-Croatian Security Considerations This document raises no security issues. Kostin Standards Track [Page 3] RFC NNNN Language property for symbolic name notation March 2002 Informative References [1] HTML 4.01 Specification, 5.3.2 Character entity references - http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html#h-5.3.2 . [2] The Unicode Standard, (Version 3.0 - ISBN 0-201-61633-5) - http://www.unicode.org/unicode/uni2book/u2.html . [3] ISO/IEC 8879 - ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC 8879-1986 (E). Information processing - Text and Office Systems - Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). First edition - 1986-10-15. [Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization, 1986. [4] Information Systems. Coded Character Sets. 7-Bit American National Standard Code for Information Interchange (7-Bit ASCII). - ANSI X3.4-1986. - ($$$) http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/product.asp?sku=ANSI+ X3%2E4%2D1986+%28R1997%29 . Author's Address Cyril Kostin, Ural'skaya ul, 1, 118. 107241 Moscow, Russia Voice: (+7 095) 462-3260 (It is in Moscow.) E-mail: cyril@chat.ru, cyril2@mail.ru, cyril@aha.ru Kostin Standards Track [Page 4] RFC NNNN Language property for symbolic name notation March 2002 Expiration date: September 2002. ________________________________________________________________________ Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. 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