Re: Are PIs useful?

[Alex Milowski]
>Because processing instructions are "single use" I consider them to be a
>hack.  I don't find them useful in SGML.  IMHO, the use of processing 
>instructions in XML to convey encodings and other information is rather
>borderline but I understand why they are used for that purpose.

The only time I have ever used PI's in a document and felt 
happy about it was an experimental Knuth'ish tangle/weave thing with
bits like this:-

<?Perl $n = 0;>
<RootElement>
<?Perl print "Bit that goes wrong starts here. Iter = " , $n;$n++;>

Passing parsed instances of such things through an applet that fishes
for, and executes Perl snippits is something I have found useful.

The 8879 maxim of treating processing instructions as if
they are "not there" in terms of the data/markup RE divide has bitten
me more than once though:-)

Sean
Sean Mc Grath

digitome@iol.ie
Digitome Electronic Publishing
http://www.digitome.com

Received on Wednesday, 14 May 1997 01:38:00 UTC