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Bug 7461 - List of space characters should include U+000B LINE TABULATION (VT) or should note why it is not included.
Summary: List of space characters should include U+000B LINE TABULATION (VT) or should...
Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/curr...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: NE, NoReply
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-08-30 20:51 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:32 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2009-08-30 20:51:56 UTC 
Section: http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#space-character

Comment:
List of space characters should include U+000B LINE TABULATION (VT) or should note why it is not included.

Posted from: 149.159.142.23
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-09-21 23:48:25 UTC 
Why would it be included?
Comment 2 mdmkolbe 2009-10-17 02:16:45 UTC 
If this U+000B LINE TABULATION (a.k.a. Vertical Tab, VT) where included, then this list of characters would be precisely those which (both the following definitions are equivalent):
 - have the Unicode White_Space property and are in Basic Latin (i.e. 7-bit ASCII)
 - are "standard white-space characters" (i.e. those for which isspace() returns true in the "C" locale) in the C99 standard [1].

To a naive reader (like me), it is surprising that VT has been excluded.  After all the other "strange" ASCII white-space character, U+000C FORM FEED (FF), is included.  It seems rather arbitrary to include FF but exclude VT.  Is there some technical distinction that I'm missing that would explain why one is included but the other excluded?

I acknowledge that HTML 4.01 also allowed FF but excluded VT [2].  However, I haven't been able to find any documentation explaining why.  On the face it looks like it could have been an oversight or a hold-over from SGML.

[1] http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1336.pdf page 183
[2] http://unicode.org/reports/tr20/#White
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-10-18 09:52:31 UTC 
It's probably a holdover from SGML, yes. I excluded it from HTML5 for consistency with HTML4 and XML. (XML also excludes FF, IIRC, but that would cause problems with, e.g., RFCs, which contain FF characters.)
Comment 4 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 14:50:24 UTC 
This bug predates the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.

If you are satisfied with the resolution of this bug, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
  http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

This bug is now being moved to VERIFIED. Please respond within two weeks. If this bug is not closed, reopened or escalated within two weeks, it may be marked as NoReply and will no longer be considered a pending comment.