Re: Whitespace

In message <199705112011.WAA11268@mygale.inria.fr> Bert Bos writes:
> Peter Murray-Rust writes:
>  > In message <199705111729.TAA10393@mygale.inria.fr> Bert Bos writes:
Thanks very much Bert,
	That has helped me, and there are one or two points the ERB might 
pick up on.

[...]
> 
> It is the collection of additional constraints on the syntax of a
> class of documents, beyond what can be expressed in the DTD. E.g., the
> profile for HTML (all versions) includes constraints such as: PI's are
> not allowed, marked sections are not allowed, document subsets are not
> allowed, a document must be in a single entity, etc. For XML there is
> a similar set of constraints.
> 
> I understand that there are people working on a formal,
> machine-readable syntax for those profiles. But even without such a
> formal syntax, you can create a profile that is written in English.

If there is an agreed formalism for this, perhaps it would be a useful
adjunct to the draft?

[...]
>  > 
>  > > 
>  > >  >  2. Default attributes
>  > > 
>  > > The previous XML-lang draft had a handy macro <?xml default...?> that
>  > 
>  > I liked this as well, and after its disappearance have vowed not to us
>  > deafults in my own DTDs :-).
> 
> That's one solution. :-)
> 
> Although it is explicitly stated that avoiding verbose markup is *not*
> a goal of XML, you can drive things too far. A simple macro like the
> one above is very easy to implement and will make writing XML by hand
> much more enjoyable.

I agree - but it's no longer in the spec.

[...]
> 
> I adopted the rule that an attribute *called* ID *is* an ID. That is
> consistent with the XML-link spec, which also uses fixed names. It is
> easy to understand and easy to implement. Only drawback: somebody
> might want to use the name ID for something else ("Internet Draft"?);
> well, tough luck.

This sounds like a very useful convention which could be hardcoded into
XML.

	P.


-- 
Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection
Virtual School of Molecular Sciences
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/

Received on Sunday, 11 May 1997 17:07:02 UTC