Re: Radical cure for BOS confusion

At 10:56 AM 1/7/97, Terry Allen wrote:
>Jon writes:
>[ ... ]
>| | Except for the name space pollution.  I'll suggest that as XML
>| | is already into application-specific PIs, it could use a PI here, too.
>|
>| I don't see the default interpretation of alink as name space
>| pollution, because any user who cares about such things would know
>| enough to override the default interpretation.
>
>It's one more special case to explain to users:  "You can name your
>elements anything you like, but watch out for 'alink'."

Exactly! While I like the idea of defaulting tags (because it will appeal
to Joe and Jane HTML) I can't stomach the namespace pollution. It's more
complicated to describe, and it's the kind of thing that, if you ever
forget it, and use a tagname like alink, it will bite you. If you're a
conscientious sort, and use DTDs like you should, you might even miss the
problem altogether, since it will only fail in the absence of a DTD that
does _not_ declare alink as the AF.

   And if you think that last sentence is confusing, parse it carefully,
and observer that all those negations are necessary.

   This seems like a gotcha that is just waiting to waste people's time.
   -- 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
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Received on Tuesday, 7 January 1997 23:39:09 UTC