Re: client/server XML (was Re: Marked Sections)

At 08:45 AM 9/13/96 +0000, James Clark wrote:
>
>> From: streich@austin.sar.slb.com
>> Date: Thu, 12 Sep 96 13:20:46 CDT
>> 
>> Declared
>> content is, unfortunately, essential since we use CDATA elements for our
>> equations. We use TeX as the markup language since the current set of
>> equation editors just makes it so easy for people to create an equation
>> and literally copy via the clipboard straight into the document.
>
>This sounds to me like a tool issue not a language issue.  Could you
>not use #PCDATA if you had a tool that could take care of preventing
>unwanted delimiter recognition (by inserting numeric character
>references or empty comments or whatever) when copying from the
>clipboard?

[Sorry that this is a few days behind. I've had my head in the sand for the
last few days trying to get some work out the door.]

Maybe, maybe not. I think it's an issue about a particular type of data.
Whether the language makes allowances for it or the tool provides a good
interface to the language to allow for it is the question. Since some
current tools don't provide a good interface to SGML for this type of
data, why should we expect anything different from XML tools? If you take
away my escape hatch, then I'm stuck.

I think it would be foolish to expect any qualitative improvements in XML
tools over what we have now. There are some good tools, but there are a lot
of really crummy ones.

Charles suggested retaining marked sections instead of declared content.
This would work, but it takes away the opportunity to attach a notation
to the data. Inconvenient, but it would be acceptable.


Robert Streich				streich@slb.com
Schlumberger				voice: 1 512 331 3318
Austin Research				fax:   1 512 331 3760

Received on Tuesday, 17 September 1996 10:11:16 UTC