# <> One Last Time

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Wed, 20 Oct 1993 12:20:00 PDT

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    Message-Id: <199310201920.AA24804@rock.west.ora.com>

    From: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>

    Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 12:20:00 PDT

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: <> One Last Time

Re draft-ietf-uri-resource-names-01.txt, just announced, we still
have specified < > as wrappers for URNs in plain text. I'm going to
say it one more time, then shut up: This is the worst possible
choice, as plain text will often be upgraded to HTML, often by
naive users, and when that happens the combination <[A-Z0-9]
will cause an SGML parser to quit. Any other syntax would be
preferable:
URN (unwrapped)
<<URN>>
<:URN>
< URN>
[URN]
(URN)
<*URN>
#URN#

etc. If the point of the angle brackets is to make it easy for
humans to find these strings in plain text, why not make it easy
for humans to find those same strings in HTML, by not wilfully
screwing up the HTML syntax?

Do it right or don't do it.

Regards,

    --
    Terry Allen  (terry@ora.com)
    Editor, Digital Media Group
    O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
    Sebastopol, Calif., 95472

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