Re: [dom] Why remove CDataSection? (#142)

I was looking for a good practical example, and this is the only one I came up with at the moment, but I do think it's valid.

Take a look at this (Flash) web app here: http://www.radii8.com/demo/ It's basically an online design tool for building apps. One of the formats that it supports is MXML. Script blocks within MXML have to be contained within CDATA blocks. I have never tried to see whether script blocks as XML encoded text (as opposed to CDATA blocks) will compile, but trying to edit the file with all the code converted into gobbledygook would be a nightmare. So, even though from an XML structure perspective CDATA is syntax, in this case, the "syntax" clearly becomes "content".

One of our goals with FlexJS is to minimize the pain of porting Flash apps to HTML apps. Flash apps in general tend to do a lot more XML processing than HTML ones (probably because of the native E4X support). Hence preserving XML processing native to E4X is an important goal. I have no data on how prevalent CDATA blocks are in XML files, but if preserving legibility of the files is important (and I think it is), preserving CDATA blocks is important.

I hope this is helpful in explaining where I'm coming from...

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Received on Wednesday, 6 January 2016 10:06:12 UTC