Fwd: XML 1.0 and XML 1.1

fyi, and from a follow up message

> Those who wish a publicly-visible URI by which to refer to this
> request for information may use the URI of this copy in www-archive.
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Oct/0058.html


regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch
Nokia



Begin forwarded message:

> Resent-From: chairs@w3.org
> From: "ext Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>
> Date: October 29, 2007 11:20:11 AM EDT
> To: <chairs@w3.org>
> Subject: XML 1.0 and XML 1.1
>
>
> Chairs,
>
> Please feel free to forward this email to your WGs.  (Public W3C
> mailing lists are fine--this is not intended to be member-only.)
>
> paul
>
> ------
>
> Since XML 1.1 became a W3C Recommendation in August 2006,
> there has been a substantial uptake of it as a peer of XML 1.0
> in new and ongoing W3C work.  This is appropriate, as XML 1.1
> was explicitly not designed to replace XML 1.0, but to supplement
> it for the benefit of various groups against which XML 1.0 had
> unjustly, but unintentionally, discriminated.
>
> However, there are very few XML 1.1 documents in the wild.
> The XML Core WG believes this to be the result of a vicious cycle,
> in which widely distributed XML parsers do not support 1.1 because
> the parser authors believe that few document authors will use it.
> This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as those who would
> benefit from XML 1.1 are rightfully concerned that documents
> written in it will not be widely acceptable.
>
> After considering various other ideas, the XML Core WG wants
> to suggest the possibility of changing XML 1.0 to relax the
> restrictions on element and attribute names thereby providing
> in XML 1.0 the major end user benefit currently achievable
> only by using XML 1.1.
>
> To quote the XML 1.1 Recommendation:
>
>  The W3C's XML 1.0 Recommendation was first issued in 1998,
>  and despite the issuance of many errata culminating in a
>  Third Edition of 2004, has remained (by intention) unchanged
>  with respect to what is well-formed XML and what is not.
>  This stability has been extremely useful for interoperability.
>  However, the Unicode Standard on which XML 1.0 relies for
>  character specifications has not remained static, evolving from
>  version 2.0 to version 4.0 and beyond.	Characters not present
>  in Unicode 2.0 may already be used in XML 1.0 character data.
>  However, they are not allowed in XML names such as element type
>  names, attribute names, enumerated attribute values, processing
>  instruction targets, and so on.  In addition, some characters
>  that should have been permitted in XML names were not, due to
>  oversights and inconsistencies in Unicode 2.0.
>
>  The overall philosophy of names has changed since XML 1.0.
>  Whereas XML 1.0 provided a rigid definition of names, wherein
>  everything that was not permitted was forbidden, XML 1.1 names are
>  designed so that everything that is not forbidden (for a specific
>  reason) is permitted.  Since Unicode will continue to grow past
>  version 4.0, further changes to XML can be avoided by allowing
>  almost any character, including those not yet assigned, in names.
>
> Since then, Unicode has expanded further to reach 5.0, and it is
> nowhere near complete with respect to the world's minority languages
> and writing systems.  If XML 1.0 relaxed the restrictions on element
> and attribute names, those who preferred to retain the Appendix B
> constraints in their documents would be free to do so, but those
> who wish to use element and attribute names in languages normally
> written in any of the Ethiopic, Cherokee, Canadian Syllabics, Khmer,
> Mongolian, Yi, Philippine, New Tai Lue, Buginese, Syloti Nagri,
> N'Ko, and Tifinagh scripts will be able to do so, as will users
> of minority languages whose scripts appeared in Unicode 2.0 but
> were lacking essential letters for writing those languages.
>
> Of course, older parsers will still reject such documents, but
> there will be no need for a strict XML 1.0/1.1 dichotomy.  The
> XML Core WG has heard evidence tending to indicate that implementing
> such a relaxation would be technically straightforward in essentially
> all XML parsers:  it is a matter of replacing a rather large
> "permitted" table with a much smaller "forbidden" table.
>
> The XML Core WG assumes that if such an erratum were to be passed
> into XML 1.0, the XML 1.1 Recommendation would eventually be  
> deprecated
> by the W3C.
>
> Comments on all aspects of this possibility are earnestly solicited;
> please send them to www-xml-blueberry-comments@w3.org (publicly
> archived).
>
> Paul Grosso
> for the XML Core WG
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 07:07:22 UTC