Re: ERB discussion of public identifiers

At 05:40 PM 12/11/96 EST, lee@sq.com wrote:
>There is no use (as far as I can see) for PUBLIC "string" being in the
>XML spec if XML systems all ignore it.  It just clutters the language
>(like the - - omissible tag parameters, or "<!DOCTYPE X SYSTEM>").

XML systems will not "all" ignore it. Some XML systems will ignore it. Just
as some XML systems will ignore my organization's or application's
processing instructions. Nobody seems to have a problem with processing
instructions, so why are public identifiers any more or less
dangerous/mysterious/useless? For now, PUBLIC identifiers are "addressing
processing instructions." At some point in the future they will be
standardized, just as some processing instruction syntaxes are standardized
(e.g. <?XML ).

These hooks give us room to experiment in the present, and room to expand
the standard in the future.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Wednesday, 11 December 1996 18:17:03 UTC