- From: John D. Ramsdell <ramsdell@linus.mitre.org>
- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 07:49:05 -0500 (EST)
- To: xml-editor@w3.org
- CC: ramsdell@linus.mitre.org, john@linus.mitre.org, bede@linus.mitre.org, pc@linus.mitre.org
Over the weekend, I studied the 10 Feb 98 version the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as formatted in PostScript. I have enclosed my comments on this draft. John [General Comments] It appears that the XML standard was written by people with a strong background in SGML. As a result, the XML standard document sometimes fails to specify some parts of XML that are obvious to someone with a background in SGML. For example, I could find no specification of the scope of an element declaration, but I'm sure someone familiar with DTD's in SGML knows the answer. [Section 2.1, Page 3, Second ordered list, Bullet 2] This item refers to concepts such as "in the content of", start-tag, and end-tag before the concepts are defined. The concept of a well-formed document seems to most naturally fit after page 10 introduces the concept of start-tags, end-tags, and empty element tags. [Section 2.7, Page 5] The text on CDATA Sections should include an example of how to include the character string "]]>" within a CDATA section. If only "]]>" is markup, one cannot write "]]>". Is that right? [Section 2.12, Page 8] The section on language identification is interesting, but I fail to understand why it is included in the XML specification. It seems me to be a suggestion on how to write DTDs rather than specifying the XML language and the behavior of its parsers. [Section 3.2, Page 11] The scope of an element declaration is not defined. As I understand it, you can use an element in another element declaration before it is defined. This fact should be explicitly stated. [Section 4.2, Page 17] The scope of general and parameter element declarations is not defined. As I understand it, you must define an element before it is referenced. This fact should be explicitly stated. Oddly enough, I thought for sure the scope of these entities was explicitly and carefully defined in previous drafts of the XML standard. Maybe I missed the relevant text. [Section 4.2.2, Page 18] For those without an SGML background, the section on public identifiers is simply mysterious. [Section 4.4.5, Page 22] The example with parameter reference appears to have a typo. <!ENTITY WhatHeSaid "He said &YN;"> should be <!ENTITY WhatHeSaid "He said %YN;"> [End of comments]
Received on Tuesday, 17 February 1998 07:49:37 UTC