Submission request to W3C (W3C Team Comment)

W3C member, International Business Machines Corporation, hereby submits to the Consortium the following specification, comprising the following document attached hereto:

1. The [NEL] Newline Character

We request the submission be known as the "Newline" submission.

Abstract

The omission of [NEL], the newline character defined in Unicode 3.0, from the End-of-Line Handling section in the XML 1.0 specification causes significant difficulty when processing XML documents and DTDs in IBM mainframe systems. Problem areas include:

• Processing XML documents or DTDs generated on OS/390 systems, with XML 1.0 compliant parsers.
• Processing XML documents or DTDs, using native OS/390 system tools.
• Processing XML documents or DTDs retrieved from OS/390 database or file systems, in non-OS/390 environments.

XML documents that contain [NEL] characters are declared invalid or not well-formed by XML 1.0 compliant parsers.

We urge the W3C to include [NEL] as a legal line ending in XML, and hence as a legal white space character, in accordance with Unicode 3.0.

Intellectual Property Rights

Declaration of International Business Machines Corporation:

IBM may own patents or patent applications which apply to the specification being submitted to the W3C. If implementation of a W3C standard based on the specification requires the use of IBM patents, IBM will grant, upon written request, a non-exclusive license under such patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

IBM expressly disclaims any and all warranties regarding this contribution including any warranty that this contribution does not violate the rights of others or is fit for a particular purpose.

Names

The following are registered marks referred to in this request or the submission: IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. All other product names are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective owners.

Specification

The submission may be distributed within the membership of the W3C free of any fee.

The submission may be distributed publicly free of any fee under the redistribution terms expressed in the W3C copyright statement.

Suggested Action

We urge the W3C to include [NEL] as a legal line ending in XML, and hence as a legal white space character, in accordance with Unicode 3.0. XML processors should treat [NEL] precisely as they treat [LF]. The two-character sequence [CR][NEL] in combination, and any [NEL] alone, i.e., not preceded by [CR], should be normalized into a single [LF].

Resources

To help with this work, we expect to provide the following:

• Support within the W3C toward the goals stated.
• Requirements, information and background on the Newline Character.
• Participation in all technical activity in this area.

Change Control

Should any changes be required to the document, we would expect future versions to be produced by W3C process.

Contact

Inquiries from the public or press about this submission should be directed to:

Michael Rowinski, rowinski@us.ibm.com, +1 212.745.6509

Submitted

on this 11th day of January 2001 by David Fallside, IBM, fallside@us.ibm.com