Re: A26: ANY keyword?

> From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
> 
> At 06:35 PM 10/3/96 CDT, Michael Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
> 
> >A.26 Like SGML, XML will allow elements to be declared ANY (11.2.4).
> 
> Upon further consideration, I think I'll vote NO on this one.  I can't
> think of a single time I've actually *used* ANY, and can't (in the abstract)
> think of situations where it is actually a worthwhile thing to do -

I've rarely used ANY too, but we've talked about using it several times
when creating simple DTDs or, more likely, taking some sort of partial
declaration and then needing to invent a declaration for an undeclared
element.  I think I can imagine various scenarios when ANY would be
useful when trying to intuit a DTD--not that there might not be better
ways of intuiting DTDs, but we may be making the problem of intuiting
DTDs a lot harder if we remove ANY.

Received on Sunday, 6 October 1996 19:28:06 UTC