Re: OMITTAG specifications in element declarations

Eve asked about the "- -" ommitted tag minimization parameter, and
adding it in to XML.

It is a red herring to say that putting them in XML would help
compatibility: if you have OMITTAG YES in your DTD, you need to
run SPAM or otherwise ensure that there are no omitted tags.
XML applictions won't handle your text otherwise, so it doesn't
matter if they wil handle the DTD or not.

It would be like adding SHORTREF parsing to XML so that you can parse
DTDs with SHORTREF -- if you're using SHORTREF, changing the DTD is
the least of the work you have to do, and is a necessary step in
any case.

So no strange and spurious tokens in XML.  They are not needed for
SGML conformance, they do not add to the expressive power of the
language, they add slightly to language complexity, and not having them
will actually _help_ interoperability with SGML.

Lee

Received on Saturday, 2 November 1996 14:50:29 UTC