comments

   The issues of syntactic simplicity and compatibility with the style of
almost all modern programming languages argue strongly for a single comment
start and comment end string. <!-- and --> are already used that way by
most people, so should remain.

   I think that a comment should be valid anywhere an s is, except in DTD
delarations (where compatiblity dictates that we not have any comments of
this form).

   I don't have a problem adding "-- comment --" inside declarations, but
only if comment and space are equivalent. We should not preserve the
current confusion between syntactic and lexical analysis in XML whenever
possible. Since it would be user and not just implementor visible in
declaration syntax, I think that such comments are right out unless we
decide to be incompatible.

   We should really make sure that comments can be treated like whitespace
by a lexical analyzer. We still have Delimiter in context woes, but if
there are only two contexts, with transitions triggered by "<" and ">", it
is still tirivial to implement in a lex equivalent or very short hand-coded
lexer.

  I would rather that the syntax were also described in two levels to make
this strategy more self-evident, but as longs as it's possible, I think we
are OK.

   -- David



I am not a number. I am an undefined character.
_________________________________________
David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
--------------------------------------------\  http://dynamicDiagrams.com/
MAPA: mapping for the WWW                    \__________________________

Received on Thursday, 12 December 1996 12:52:04 UTC