Why was this document deprecated?

[murata2makoto]

I am wondering why this document was deprecated. Is this because any Unicode character should be freely usable in markup documents?

[duerst]

My understanding is that it was deprecated for the following (interrelated) reasons:

1. It wasn't being updated anymore to new Unicode versions.
2. The authors were busy.
3. The joint publication took a lot of work (mainly because the processes of the two organizations are quite different, and because each of them preferred to have the last word).
4. Although there was agreement on the general idea of the document, there was constant low-level disagreement about the weight of the different issues and the related wording.
5. The document was advisory, which means it was difficult to check whether and to what extent it was followed.
   I think the document still contains lots of good advice, but not advice that you should follow blindly. You can essentially use any Unicode character in a Web page, but sometimes you have a choice, and some choices may be better than others (your mileage may vary).

[murata2makoto]

@duerst Thanks. I plan to create another W3C note for accessible EPUB publications in Japanese. I will try study this document carefully.