Re: [Comment on xml-i18n-bp WD] CDATA sections

Martin Duerst wrote:
> Hello Elliotte,
> 
> Just a personal comment for the moment:
> 
> I think the caution against CDATA sections is motivated by the fact
> that you cannot use numeric character references in CDATA sections.
> This means that unless you use an Unicode encoding for the document,
> there are limitations on the set of characters you can use.

I'd seriously considering adding a suggestion that everyone just use 
UTF-8 for XML to this document. It makes so many things so much simpler.

> There was a time when some people claimed that CDATA sections were
> more than syntactic sugar, i.e. something like one more, somewhat
> special, element. In such a kind of use, the i18n concerns were most
> obvious. The fact that CDATA sections don't appear in the
> Infoset and are flattened by XSLT has fortunately let this view
> die out as far as I'm aware of.
> 

Would that it were so. This view has mostly died out within the W3C 
specs and among the XML-cognoscenti but I encounter it constantly out in 
the field. Many, many developers still attempt to use CDATA sections as 
some sort of funky element. :-(

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

Received on Tuesday, 23 May 2006 12:25:20 UTC