- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 07:05:01 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>
- Cc: spec-prod@w3.org, www-qa@w3.org
On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote: > > I think W3C should publish a Recommendation or a Group Note defining the > EBNF format "defined" in http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-notation and > elsewhere. This is needed because the definition in the XML 1.0 > Recommendation is incomplete and W3C technical reports define more and > more variants of it for which it is not easy to tell whether they are > different or not. An alternative would be for the W3C to standardise on ISO 14977:1996 or RFC 2234. Personally I would discourage the use of BNF, however, as it makes it very difficult to define error handling rules, and specifications often forget to define how to go from the parsed tree to the semantics that the specification defines, leaving it up to UA implementors to work out the implied mapping. For example, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in the XML 1.0 spec that says what the syntax of an XML Declaration (as found in a prolog) is. One can make a guess, but the spec doesn't say whether we are right. The reliance on EBNF has made it easier to leave the mapping of the strict syntax definitions to the actual semantics to implication than to make the spec full and complete. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Monday, 9 January 2006 07:05:15 UTC