Re: angle brackets(< >) and html. (was purpose of arrows)

[Mark Baker <mbaker -at- OMNIMARK -dot- COM>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Wolfe <keith -at- MERGE -dot- COM>
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU <TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>
Date: Wednesday, August 05, 1998 1:51 PM
Subject: angle brackets(< >) and html. (was purpose of arrows)


>Earlier, in regards to use of arrows in procedures, I wrote:
>
>Does anybody know if this method (single ">") creates a problem
>with HTML conversion?
>
>David Brown Responded:
>
>> Yes, but no worse than any other use of left or right angle brackets,
>> which are interpreted as tag delimiters.  The strings "<!--" and "-->"
>> are a special case (not really an exception):  they begin and end
>> comment blocks.
>
>So how do you work around this problem?

Dave overstates the case a bit. The use of "<" and ">" is only a problem
when they could be mistaken for markup. ">" is interpreted as a tag
delimiter only when it occurs in the context of a tag. When it occurs in
text, it is just ">". Similarly "-->" is recognized as an comment end tag
only within the context of a comment, so "-->" in text is treated simply as
"-->".

Now, as it turns out, "<--" should be safe as well Since SGML element names
cannot begin with "-", "<--" is not a valid start tag and should therefore
be treated as text. Similarly "<" followed by a space is not a valid start
tag, so it too should be treated as text. There is an old SGML trick for
entering "<", which us to enter "<<!>" where <!> is a null tag that serves
to invalidate the initial "<" as a tag name, causing it to be treated as
text. Of course, HTML browsers are not implemented as fully compliant SGML
processing applications, so your mileage may vary, but all these tricks work
in IE4. I don't know it they will work in every old browser, but no new
browser ought to have a problem with them.

---
Mark Baker
Manager, Corporate Communications
OmniMark Technologies Corporation
1400 Blair Place
Gloucester, Ontario
Canada, K1J 9B8
Phone: 613-745-4242
Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- omnimark -dot- com
Web: http://www.omnimark.com


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