Re: [xml-dev] version numbers and infosets

At 1:26 PM +0100 7/23/02, Richard Tobin wrote:


>But as I said, I've been persuaded that we shouldn't require 1.0
>parsers to reject documents labelled other than 1.0.  What I would
>really appreciate is some feedback on the possibility of changing the
>terminology so that such documents are "not 1.0 well-formed, but
>acceptable by 1.0 parsers" rather than "1.0 well-formed, but
>rejectable by 1.0 parsers".
>

This just makes the existing mess of different conformance levels to 
XML worse. Currently there are three levels of conformance:

1. Well-formed
2. Well-formed with no optional errors (like ambiguous content models 
or version="1.1")
3. Valid

You want to add a fourth level, not well-formed but OK. This 
significantly complexifies the XML story. It makes to impossible to 
say a parser must reject all malformed documents. It adds still more 
weasel words we have to use when trying to teach this stuff 
accurately. I think this is a very bad idea. Leave the existing spec 
alone: no erratum, no change. XML 1.0 is defined by the XML 1.0 spec 
as originally published. Make any changes in future versions if you 
really must, but don't touch XML 1.0.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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Received on Tuesday, 23 July 2002 09:14:01 UTC