More comments

(This is a copy of a message I sent directly to John.)


A GENERAL COMMENT.  

You explain to the reader that you are defining a tree model, but you
never explain explicitly what the node set is or what the edge (or
child) relation is.  You don't make clear from the outset that some
nodes are ordered and some are not.

DETAILED COMMENTS

> This document specifies an abstract data set called the XML
> information set (Infoset), a description of the information
> available in a well-formed XML document [XML].

Why not something plain along the lines:

 "XML 1.0 is a textual representation for labeled trees.  In this document,
 we explain this abstraction."

I have argued elsewhere that the terminology in this document is
cumbersome and not enlightening.  I hope that this issue will be
considered, but I'll not dwell more on it here.

> An information item is an abstract representation of some component
> of an XML document: each information item has a set of associated
> properties, some of which are core, and some of which are
> peripheral.

By "component", you mean  "characters" or "text" what?  There is no
such thing as a component in XML 1.0.

>  The in-between information sets must be fully consistent with the
>  maximal information set.

The concept of "consistent" is not defined, neither is the concept
"fully consistent".

> The XML information set can contain fifteen different types of
> information items:

"An XML information set..." is better, perhaps.

> There is always one document information item in the information set, 

Should be "There is exactly one document information item in the
information set,"

> and all other information items are related to the document
> information item, either directly or indirectly.

How? By virtue of the tree model?

> [children - comments] One reference to a comment information item
> for each comment outside the document element, added to the ordered
> list of child information items. The relative position of each
> comment information item in the list must reflect its position in
> the original document.

This sentence is cryptic: the children property is already defined as
a list of references, potentially including references to other stuff.
What does it mean that the children-comments property is the action of
references "added to the ordered list of child information items"?  Is
the children-comments property a sublist of the child property list?

> The document information item 

Should be called the root information item so as not to confuse the
root information item with the document element information item.

> "document instance"

What is that?  Elsewhere, the document is referred to as the
"document".

Received on Wednesday, 26 January 2000 16:18:27 UTC