- From: <lee@sq.com>
- Date: Tue, 27 May 97 13:40:03 EDT
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
Sean wrote:
> Is it not strange that something as fundamental as the correctness
> of XML parse trees is not part of the base spec?
No, I don't think so. It's also not part of the ANSI C spec, nor that of
C++, Pascal, IEEE SCHEME, etc.
A parser should be free to construct whatever data structure is
most suitable for its intended application. I have a simple XMLish
browser that doesn't use a tree at all. Old versions of Mosaic used
a flat linked list, and although I wouldn't recommend that approach,
it certainly worked, at least until they tried to support tables :-)
We already have a lexical representation of XML -- XML itself.
There might be some mileage in an XML version of ESIS++, I suppose,
for testing:
<Element>
<Name>Boy</Name>
<Attlist>
<Attribute>
<Name>Age</Name>
<Value source="instance">12</Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Gender</Name>
<Value source="default">Male</Value>
</Attribute>
...
</AttList>
<Content>
...
</Content>
</Element>
Since XML is _designed_ to be easy to parse, the advantage of an ESIS
form is considerably reduced.
Lee
Received on Tuesday, 27 May 1997 13:40:18 UTC