- From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
- Date: Wed, 07 May 97 18:55:14 CDT
- To: W3C SGML Working Group <w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org>
On Wed, 7 May 1997 06:41:14 -0400 Peter Murray-Rust said:
>This is doubtless not news to any of you, but it's a shock to me, that
>WF documents and validated documents ***GIVE DIFFERENT OUTPUT***. I
>am sure that this will be a rich source of confusion.
Yes, it will. What may not be obvious is that despite that confusion,
this behavior really was the best available at the time.
The XML-lang spec is still missing an appendix that lists in
detail specifically what publishers need to do if they wish to
ensure that every XML parser will produce the same grove
from the document instance. Such an appendix should make it
easy to write XML applications which perform the necessary
normalizations -- in fact, I think James Clark may have added
something to SP that does them even now.
> If all CML documents have to be presented as
>
><CML><XVAR>A variable</XVAR></CML>
>
>this is unworkable, since this can run to tens of thousands of characters
>without a line break and this breaks text editors. And remember
I don't think so, because line breaks can always be introduced
before the closing angle bracket of any start- or end-tag, or
before the /> of sole-tags (i.e. tags for elements with empty content):
<CML
><XVAR
>A variable</XVAR
></CML
>
I accept the comments on this topic as evidence that the relevant
portions of the XML-lang spec need to be rewritten to be clearer.
-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Received on Wednesday, 7 May 1997 20:02:25 UTC