XML Blueberry Requirements

See:
   XML Blueberry Requirements
   W3C Working Draft 20 June 2001
   http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-blueberry-req

| 1. Introduction
|
| The W3C's XML 1.0 Recommendation [XML] was first issued in 1998, and
| despite the issuance of many errata culminating in a Second Edition of
| 2001, has remained (by intention) unchanged with respect to what is
| well-formed XML and what is not. This stability has been extremely
| useful for interoperability. However, the Unicode Standard [Unicode] on
| which XML 1.0 relies has not remained static, evolving from version 2.0
| to version 3.1. Characters present in Unicode 3.1 but not in Unicode 2.0
| may be used in XML character data, but are not allowed in XML names such
| as element type names, attribute names, processing instruction targets,
| and so on. In addition, some characters that should have been permitted
| in XML names were not, due to oversights and inconsistencies in Unicode
| 2.0.
|
| As a result, fully native-language XML markup is not possible in at
| least the following languages: Amharic, Burmese, Canadian aboriginal
| languages, Cantonese (Bopomofo script), Cherokee, Dhivehi, Khmer,
| Mongolian (traditional script), Oromo, Syriac, Tigre, Yi. In addition,
| Chinese, Japanese, Korean (Hangul script), and Vietnamese can make use
| of only a limited subset of their complete character repertoires.
|
| In addition, XML 1.0 attempts to adapt to the line-end conventions of
| various modern operating systems, but discriminates against the
| convention used on IBM and IBM-compatible mainframes. XML 1.0 documents
| generated on mainframes must either violate the local line-end
| conventions, or employ otherwise unnecessary translation phases before
| and after XML parsing and generation.
|
| A new XML version, rather than a set of errata to XML 1.0, is being
| created because the change affects the definition of well-formed
| documents: XML 1.0 processors must continue to reject documents that
| contain new characters in XML names or new line-end conventions. It is
| presumed that the distinction between XML 1.0 and XML Blueberry will be
| indicated by the XML declaration.
|
| [...]

Misha



-----------------------------------------------------------------
        Visit our Internet site at http://www.reuters.com

Any views expressed in this message are those of  the  individual
sender,  except  where  the sender specifically states them to be
the views of Reuters Ltd.

Received on Wednesday, 20 June 2001 16:30:35 UTC