Talk:Character entity reference

Merge discussion

Propose merge from: List of XML and HTML character entity references into this page.

1. The titles (articles) cover mostly the same
2. The List-article already has an elaborate describing text (is more than just a list, it is an article in itself)
3. The current Character entity reference is more like a summary of the subject, adding not much to the links
4. The merge can be done without any loss of information (In general: the List can be copied completely, some lines from Character entity reference can then be added.)
5. The title "Character entity reference" should be used for the final article, for reasonsd of MOS:Naming Conventions. The List... will become a Redirect
   

-DePiep (talk) 13:07, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Can I suggest that you have two articles, but one to be the encyclopaedic article with all the explanatory, and the List to be just that, a list, with a link back to the article. Both have their usages, and having a sole list is usual especially as a reference, without the need for the explanatory. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:30, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I support merging the two articles. I tend to agree with most of DePiep’s points, but it would be best to merge into the list article since that article has more history and better quality text. Then move the current Character entity reference out of the way (rather than deleting it, so that its history is still available), and move the merged list article to Character entity reference. Or to a better title if one is suggested below. Billinghurst’s suggestion is also reasonable if people want to keep the list separate. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 13:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC).

Proposed problem

Problem is - it also contains info regarding Numeric Encoding for XML files reference. That's how I came to the information - I followed a link to this list from that page: Numeric_character_reference.

I specifically DIDN'T fillow the link to Character Encoding, as that wasn't what I was looking for...

If it had been the only option, I MAY have gone there - but I would have wondered why that info wasn't also in the Numeric Character Reference page... This way, it can be linked to from both pages - with saying which it is more relevant to. - Fishfugu (talk) 04:53, 23 July 2010 (UTC) (moved signing from title to here -DePiep (talk) 18:15, 5 August 2010 (UTC))

Surely a negative experience, that asks for an improvement. Could you clarify: what did you look for, what did yo expect to see, and what was the disappointment (=did not found what you looked for)? Otherwise, you could illustrate that by what you typed & entered & clicked (but that is more difficult to get the problem across, really). -DePiep (talk) 18:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Nominating for Deletion

I'm nominating this article for deletion. There is no such thing as a "Character Entity Reference" defined in XML. Please see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-references

There are two kinds of entities (well, ignoring the parsed/unparsed distinction, which isn't relevant here). There are Character References and Entity References. An Entity reference can expand to zero, one, or more characters. Character references are often called "Numeric Character references" and identify a character by its Unicode codepoint, e.g.   for blank. I can't imagine that numeric character references deserve a WP entry. Tim Bray (talk) 21:22, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

They are defined in HTML (and apparently SGML) though. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:24, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

 – AfD removed for this reason. -DePiep (talk) 02:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Rename/other

Tim - can you suggest a better article name?, similarly with Talk:List of XML and HTML character entity references ? Widefox (talk) 10:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The XML FAQ listed in XML uses the term “character entities” to refer to XML’s predefined entities: http://xml.silmaril.ie/specials.html. I suspect that FAQ is closely tied to the primary source, but I expect other sources would also use these terms. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 13:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC).

That one is easy - I removed that from the further reading list. I doesn't look very authoritative, so I wouldn't put too much weight on that source. Widefox (talk) 20:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)