Re: C.8 Prohibit reference to undeclared elements?

At 1:21 PM 10/17/96, Michael Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
>On 23 October 1996, the ERB will vote to decide the following
>question.  A straw poll indicates the ERB is leaning to no (i.e. to
>retaining the rules in 8879).
>
>C.8 Should XML prohibit content-model references to undeclared
>elements (11.2.4)?

Yes.

All we get from this is a bunch of "clever coding tricks" == "weird,
hard-to-understand hacks". It's much easier, and moer natural, to go with
the first commandment of every other language in the world except SGML:

   1.0 "you must define what you reference"

  Languages differ on when and how and what you declare, but few have this
feature. If we allow reference to undefined elements, they should be legal.

   In addition, if we retain this distinction, we can't tell the difference
between an "elephant's child" hack and an "incomplete DTD".

   -- David

RE delenda est.

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Received on Thursday, 17 October 1996 22:49:19 UTC