perl-unicode

Re: In-Band Information Considered Harmful

1998-10-23 15:54:45
According to John Macdonald:
Ilya Zakharevich wrote :
|| This is a very interesting question: how to cut-and-paste a piece of
|| enhanced text.

Whether the attribute also applies to a piece cut out of the middle
can certainly depend upon the sort of attribute.

Good point.

I see no way for Perl to figure this out on its own.

I think then that one attribute of each piece of metadata is whether
it applies to the characters inside the range individually (a la <b>)
or only to the range as a whole (a la <url>).  This is one aspect of
metadata that the Perl runtime will have to be aware of -- but it will
be up to the programmer who writes the input filter to assign that
attribute correctly in order to get correct behavior.  Perl can't guess.

Retaining enclosing inline attributes does require more effort,
unless you've built an out-of-line wrapping to collect its meaning.

Bingo.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg               - a.k.a. -              
<chip(_at_)perlsupport(_dot_)com>
 "... under cover of afternoon in the biggest car in the county?!" //MST3K