Re: BOM mark from Windows notepad

[Hans Aberg]

On 19 Nov 2009, at 00:41, Patrick McCarty wrote:

> > Also, the conditions and the stuff following might possibly be
> > removed. Something like:
> >  {BOM_UTF8} {}
> > or
> >  {BOM_UTF8}+ {}
> >
> > If a language always zips out spaces, one can have rules:
> >  [ \f\r\t\v]+ {}
> >  \n+          { \* Maybe action here counting lines */ }
> > Then the BOM should just be treated as the other spaces and tabs.
>
> This follows the behavior recommended by RFC 3629, so this is the
> behavior LilyPond should follow, too.
>
> More specifically, RFC 3629 states that
>
>  "It is important to understand that the character U+FEFF appearing
>  at any position other than the beginning of a stream MUST be
>  interpreted with the semantics for the zero-width non-breaking
>  space..."

I think that it was changed. If the BOM is only allowed in the  
beginning of the file, it becomes a state-dependent character. For  
example, if one includes two files verbatim in another, then the BOMs  
will no longer be in the beginning of the combined stream. So  
therefore this state-less definition is to be preferred.

So once upon the time, BOMs were intended to be used only in the  
beginning if the file, and LilyPond conforms to that. But not to this  
later definition. - My impression. :-)

  Hans