Re: What to do about newlines in attribute values?

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 2:24 PM, John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

> David Lee scripsit:
>
> > If we allow newlines in attributes, what is the case for being
> > incompatible with XML in the data model for attributes (i.e. maintaining
> > the newlines instead of turning to spaces)
>
> It's straightforward: you put characters in an attribute value, you get
> the same characters out, just as in element content.  No special rules or
> explanations are needed.
>

+1

And I want to reiterate that for me the compatibility goal means all
MicroXML docs are WF XML.  I don not think we should be constrained to have
a fully backward compatible data model, though I agree we should carefully
consider each DM incompatibility we introduce (as we're doing in this case).

We already thought seriously about introducing a DM
backwards-incompatibility, when discussing whether we should have PIs
allowed only in the prologue, but attach those PIs as information items to
the root element, rather than create a document item and use that.  I think
the reason we scrapped that approach was not because
of backwards-incompatibility but because of the hard-fought agreement that
it's simplest just to ditch PIs altogether.

For me, as John puts it above nicely, the simplicity argument favors
allowing newlines but with no normalization.


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