Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 14:19:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: Re: Free insertion of linear-white-space 
To: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Cc: John Gardiner Myers <jgm+@cmu.edu>, drums@cs.utk.edu
In-Reply-To: <199603112155.QAA22383@wilma.cs.utk.edu>
Message-Id: <MailManager.826582769.18793.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
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Once again, I'm pretty sure that comments and white space within a domain were
prohibited, by administrative fiat if not by protocol.  This is certainly what
a lot of implementations assume.  Once again, the problem is the existance of
a completely unnecessary syntax rule that "." is not an atom character.

I was not at either of the working group meetings.  I'd like to know the
rationale behind not changing the set of specials.  Was it to preserve
compatibility with the past, or is there a real technical reason?

I agree that in the present siuation, parsing one thing but generating another
thing is what you have to do.  It's not clear to me that this is a good state
of affairs; just what you're forced to do.