RE: Request for clarification

I'm afraid Tim's statement is wrong.  Or rather, incomplete, since it
mentions only one reason why CDATA sections cannot carry binary data,
leaving out the other two which you correctly mention.

There have been calls for a simple way to carry binary data, some
discussion, but this will not happen before a new version of XML is defined.

--
François Yergeau


> -----Message d'origine-----
> De: xml-editor-request@w3.org [mailto:xml-editor-request@w3.org]De la
> part de mfinney@lynchburg.net
> Date: jeudi 10 février 2000 15:35
> À: xml-editor@w3.org
> Objet: Request for clarification
>
>
> I would like to request a clarification on the grammar for
> CDATA secion.
> Production [20] states...
>
>    [20]  CData ::=  (Char* - (Char* ']]>' Char*))
>
> which would imply that characters which do not meed the Char
> [2] production
> are not allowed in CDATA sections.  Further, section 2.11 states...
>
>    To simplify the tasks of applications, wherever an external parsed
>    entity or the literal entity value of an internal parsed
> entity contains
>    either the literal two-character sequence "#xD#xA" or a standalone
>    literal #xD, an XML processor must pass to the application
> the single
>    character #xA. (This behavior can conveniently be produced
> by normalizing
>    all line breaks to #xA on input, before parsing.)
>
> This implies that the new-line processing takes place in the
> CDATA sections
> because of the last sentence.
>
> However, Tim Bray states in his annotation to XML...
>
>    When you look at CDATA, you might get the impression that you could
>    maybe jam your binary data in a CDATA section. You'd be right, but
>    you'd have to guarantee that it never included a byte sequence that
>    looks like ]]>.
>
> which would be incorrect if either only Char data is allowed
> or if new-line
> processing does takes place as described.
>
> Is it the intention that either restriction apply to CDATA
> sections?  Or any
> other restriction that would prevent binary data (other than ]]>) from
> being represented in CDATA sections?  Thank you.
> Michael Lee Finney
>    michael.finney@acm.org
>    michael.finney@computer.org
>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2000 16:39:01 UTC