Re: What to do about newlines in attribute values?

On 13/09/2012 07:29, James Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org 
> <mailto:liam@w3.org>> wrote:
>
>
>     It might be better to forbid newlines in attributes.
>
>
> That's an interesting suggestion. Every option has its problems:
>
> a) allow newlines but normalizes to spaces (as XML): compatible with 
> XML, but leaves MicroXML with ugly and surprising
>
> b) disallow literal newlines: compatible with XML; users can still 
> include newlines using numeric character references; possibly better 
> error recovering when a closing quote is missing; maybe a surprising 
> limitation, but then again lots of programming languages don't allow 
> literal newlines in string literals
>
> c) allow newlines but don't normalize them: most useful behaviour but 
> incompatible with XML
>
> Currently the spec has (c), but I can see definite advantages to (b).
>
> Opinions?
>
>
There's a lot of XSLT 2.0 code around that relies heavily on newlines in 
attribute values; it would be better if they weren't turned into spaces, 
but it doesn't matter greatly that they are (the main adverse effect is 
that when you transform a stylesheet, you lose the layout). I don't know 
if this is a use case worth bothering about, but disallowing literal 
newlines reduces the set of existing XML documents that are also 
microXML documents.

Michael Kay
Saxonica