FM 6.0 and Unicode

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Adobe's failure to implement Unicode in 6.0 is a giant hiccup, but maybe
there's a (somewhat awkward) way around the problem when using FM+SGML 6.0
to export XML from EDD-defined structured documents. The basic problem is
that, without Unicode, entity references (defined in the ISO PUBLIC
character sets for SGML) will have to be produced in the XML for upper-ASCII
characters, plus any others which require the Symbol font.

It should not be a big deal to build a post-processor that scans exported
XML document instances for those entity references, and replaces them with
the corresponding Unicode value.

It also shouldn't be a big deal to build a pre-processor that would scan an
XML document instance (conforming to some prescribed DTD) and convert
Unicode characters corresponding to those in the ISO PUBLIC character sets
to entity references (the pre-processor would also have to massage a few
other things in the XML document instance to turn it into SGML that conforms
to the same DTD as the one declared in the XML).

With the proposed pre- and post-processors, it would then be possible to
round-trip any XML document instance that was originally produced in
FM+SGML. It should also be possible for the pre-processor to convert XML
document instances not created with FM+SGML to conformant SGML if the DTD
for the XML is known, provided that all Unicode characters corresponding to
characters in the ISO PUBLIC character sets can be converted to the
equivalent entity references.

Admittedly, this proposed solution is by no means able to fully implement
Unicode, since it would restrict XML characters above ASCII 127 decimal to
those defined in the ISO PUBLIC character sets, but at least it's a start. 

It might even be possible to implement these pre-and post-processors as
FM+SGML plug-ins. Does this sound feasible, and if so, do you think we could
interest a third-party software developer (e.g., BlueBerry or Omni Systems)
in implementing it?

Your comments please. 
     ====================
     | Nullius in Verba |
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Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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