INTERNET-DRAFT Expiration date: September 2002. Network Working Group C. Kostin Request for Comments: nnnn Category: Standards Track Date: March 2002 Language Property For Character References draft-kostin-language-property-01.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026 (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 symbolic name way of character references in HTML by adding to the character symbolic name an optional language property in the following manner "&[+];." This language property shows what language a referenced character belongs to. Kostin Standards Track [Page 1] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 ________________________________________________________________________ Introduction Dear Sirs, It seems likely that method of encoding characters in operating systems becomes more and more similar to character entity references 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 the symbolic name notation by adding to it an optional language property which must show what language an encoded character belongs to. Kostin Standards Track [Page 2] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 ________________________________________________________________________ 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. "}". Kostin Standards Track [Page 3] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 ________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 2 - LANGUAGE PROPERTY FOR CHARACTER REFERENCES CHAPTER 2, DIVISION 1 LANGUAGE PROPERTY SYNTAX (002.001.001.0001 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 1) This document introduces an optional language property for characters 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, i. e. abbreviation of a name of some language, which specifies what a language the character encoded by a symbolic name belongs to. (002.001.001.0002 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 2) The language property is added after specified symbolic name separated from the symbolic name (or from another character property) by a language property separator, a plus ("+") sign. (A hyphen, minus ("-") sign, is reserved for using inside the language property (abbreviated language name), for example to separate subtags as in RFC 3066 (see ref. [5] below), also for using inside other possible character properties and maybe for using inside the symbolic names too.) (002.001.001.0003 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 3) The language property has a higher priority than the language tag described in RFC 3066 (ref. [5] below). (002.001.001.0004 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 4) BNF: &{}[+]{}; The language property, as you can see and as mentioned above (paragraph 1, abstract, introduction), is an optional parameter. (002.001.001.0005 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 1, paragraph 5) 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". Kostin Standards Track [Page 4] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 002.001.002 - CHARACTERS USED TO COMPOSE THE LANGUAGE PROPERTY ITSELF (002.001.002.0001 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 2, paragraph 1) The language property (abbreviation of a language name) is composed of ASCII characters, the characters which form a complete and perhaps a most stable and reliable set of characters so far (for ASCII, see ref. [4] below), excluding: 1. (excluding) ASCII-characters used as character property separators (to avoid confusion with the beginning of another character property) (e. g. a plus ("+") sign is a language property separator), 2. (excluding) the "&" ASCII-character (used as delimiter of the beginning of another character reference (ref. [1] below)), 3. (excluding) the ";" ASCII-character (used as delimiter of the end of the character reference (ref. [1] below)). (002.001.002.0002 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 2, paragraph 2) So list of characters surely allowable for now for composing language properties looks as follows: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - _ ' (002.001.002.0003 - Chapter 2, division 1, section 2, paragraph 3) There is no restriction on a length of a word for representing the language property. The word should be as long (or as short) as enough to identify, intuitively, by just reading the word, the language, which this word represents. (Simple rule for abbreviations.) CHAPTER 2, DIVISION 2 ABOUT LIST OF SHORT NAMES FOR LANGUAGES (002.002.001.0001 - Chapter 2, division 2, section 1, paragraph 1) For purposes of guarantee unambiguously to identify a language by its short name and against possible confusion when different languages will named with the same short name and wise versa a list of short words (abbreviations) already chosen for names for some languages are maintained. This list is permanently opened for free reading, copying, distributing, and adding a new language name (the last is rather with few restrictions). Kostin Standards Track [Page 5] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 (002.002.001.0002 - Chapter 2, division 2, section 1, paragraph 2) Please, take into consideration that this document doesn't contain any list of languages names. (002.002.001.0003 - Chapter 2, division 2, section 1, paragraph 3) An example of the languages names list. bopo - Bopomofo eng - English eng-US - English, American kling - Klingons' language lat - Latin slav-old - Old Slavonic/Slavic rus - Russian serb - Serbo-Croatian Kostin Standards Track [Page 6] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 Security Considerations This document raises no security issues. 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 . [5] "Tags for the Identification of Languages", H. Alvestrand, RFC 3066, (Obsoletes RFC 1766,) Cisco Systems, January 2001. - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt 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 7] RFC NNNN Language Property For Character References March 2002 Expiration date: September 2002. ________________________________________________________________________ Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. 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