- From: Jon Bosak <bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM>
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 22:49:05 -0800
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
- cc: bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM
(A second person has taken me to task offline for the statement quoted below, so I'd better acknowledge that I was overlooking legal SGML practice.) | >I am made uneasy by the thought that a legal DTD would then be stating | >specifically something that would not be true in XML, namely that | >certain omissions were allowed when, in fact, they would not be. | | SGML with OMITAG NO permits but does not require the omitted tag | minimization parameter. If it is present it is ignored. Do you | believe that in SGML you will "be stating specifically something | that would not be true" in SGML under these circumstances? This is | solely to prevent needing multiple copies of the same DTD. Why | should the same analysis and rationale not apply to XML. Yes, as I replied offline to someone else who made the same point, my quarrel turns out to be with the original design decision. I wouldn't have agreed with it then, either. If you push this rationale very far you end up with the position that *all* omission parameters are bogus, and that if you allow omission at all you might as well just mark everything possible "O O". I thank Eliot Kimber for this observation, which at first freaked me out but which I'm now beginning to see the logic of, though I still don't like it. To me it's a demonstration by reductio ad horrendum that you don't want to allow tag minimization. (By the way, I think that the people arguing in favor of Paul's original request have made a pretty good case for it.) Jon
Received on Thursday, 6 March 1997 01:49:03 UTC