a few comments on the first part of the draft

[this bounced for some reason, so I'm resending]

In clause 2.3, the doctype decl is given as:
	'<!DOCTYPE' (Name | S)+ ('[' [^]]* ']')? '>'

Unless I'm confused by the notation, that appears to allow Name
to come after DOCTYPE with no intervening space.  It also appears
to allow any number of space-separated Names before the internal subset.
(I think Chris Maden mentioned this too.)  Finally, it appears not
to allow any ] characters in the internal subset, but not only
could they appear in attribute values, but the conditionalSect
construct uses them.  In fact, it uses ']]>' so any trivial
grammar that stops at the first occurrence of ]> is going to
screw up the internal subset.

Also in the trivial grammar, the processing instruction is given as:
	'<?' [^?]* ('?' [^>]+)* '?>'

That seems to say that, once you've seen the first ? in the content
of the PI, you can no longer have any >'s in the PI.  Is that correct?
Would the latter be better:
	'<?' [^?]* ('?' [^>] [^?]*)* '?>'

(Likewise in clause 2.5. Processing Instructions.)

Also in clause 2.3, the spec suggests &sqot; and &quot; for single
and double quotes respectively "to allow attribute values to contain
both single and double quotes."  Whereas &quot; is defined in ISO
Numeric and Special Graphic characters, &sqot; is not in any of
the defns with which I'm familiar.  Nor can I find an entity among
the ISO set for single, neither left nor right, not rising or whatever
quote.  Instead of inventing one, I'd suggest just not defining
anything for a single quote.  You only need to define one for
double quote to allow attribute values (delimited by double quotes)
to contain both single quotes and double quotes.  Let's toss this
&sqot; (or whatever, regardless of the name) and just mention &quot;.

I decided not to work on [24] the MsData definition at this time of night.

In 2.9, is the value of the <?XML RMD=... PI supposed to be quoted
or not?  Though it may not have to be quoted grammar-wise, I think
so many people will be used to quoting such things that we should
at least allow it optionally to be quoted.

Received on Wednesday, 13 November 1996 10:09:55 UTC