Re: RS/RE, again (sorry)

>  <LIST> -+-- #PCDATA "\n"
>          | 
>          +-- <UITEM>
>          |
>          +-- #PCDATA "\n"
>          |
>          +-- <UITEM>
>          |
>          +-- #PCDATA "\n"
>
>
>The (obvious) problem arises when you ask for the 2nd child of the <LIST>
>element.  The first parse will give you the second <UITEM> sub-element,
>while the second parse will give you a pseudo-element containing only a "\n".
>
>Without some way to indicate that this should be treated as element content,
>this could easily become a real mess.

I disagree. If you are asking for "element number two", you are using
one of the most fragile forms of hyperlink anyway: one that is very
much dependent on the *exact* structure/parser characteristics of the
system. 

Such links are very useful in some situations, but if people are
*really* worried about this problem, they shouldn't use them.

Then again, given that we can define what actually appears within the
grove in XML, such hyperlinks in XML will be "correct" anyway (ie. the
second element *should* be the psuedo-element).

Received on Tuesday, 17 December 1996 21:22:23 UTC