Automatic removal of characters by browsers

[r12a]

Raised on 2013-01-18
By Richard Ishida

3.4 Deprecated Formatting Characters, U+206A..U+206F
https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-unicode-xml-20130124/#Deprecated

"What to do if detected: When received by a browser as part of marked up text, they may be ignored. When received in an editing context, they may be removed, possibly with a warning. Alternatively, an appropriate conversion from the legacy text model may be provided. This will most likely be limited to applications directly interfacing with and knowledgeable of the particular legacy implementation that inspired these characters."

I strongly object to the idea of removing characters without getting the user's approval. If browsers silently removed such characters, applications such as UniView would no longer work. You can't make assumptions about what people are trying to do in their browser.

There are other proposals that a browser should automatically remove characters in sections following this one, and I think that all those recommendations should be dropped, too.

[r12a]

Reply in email, 2013-01-19
By Martin Dürst

The title of this issue is wrong, and there seems to be a misunderstanding.

The text says
"browser ... may be ignored" and
"editing context ... may be removed, possibly with a warning"

So contrary to the issue text, browsers don't remove such characters,
and in editors, people get a warning.