RE: white space in parse attribute

The WG would like to keep the DTD fragment as is, it's primary purpose
is to describe the allowable content and an enumeration seems fine
there.  To change it would reduce the descriptive power of the example
DTD.  I'll change the use of "enumeration" in the text as you suggest.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 11:35 AM
> To: Jonathan Marsh
> Cc: www-xml-xinclude-comments@w3.org
> Subject: RE: white space in parse attribute
> 
> At 10:38 AM -0800 1/7/04, Jonathan Marsh wrote:
> >The XML Core WG was reluctant to add additional processing
requirements
> >(even the modest one of stripping whitespace) for this case.  We
> >collectively couldn't recall in practice seeing whitespace around
names
> >in similar specs, and didn't think the overhead was necessary.
> >Whitespace in the parse attribute will cause the XInclude processor
to
> >fail, and users must refrain from putting it in.  The note in section
> >3.1 covers the case where this error is not detected by certain
> >processors because the whitespace has been normalized away prior to
> >inclusion.
> >
> >Please let us know if you disagree with this resolution.
> >
> 
> OK. I understand your reasoning and it makes sense. To that extent I
> accept your resolution. However, based on that logic, I would like to
> make a couple of related comments.
> 
> 1. Why is the parse attribute declared to be an enumeration? Why not
> declare it to be CDATA so that leading and trailing white space isn't
> stripped? This would better guarantee interoperability.
> 
> Of course the DTD is non-normative, and people can declare it to be
> whatever they want. Since users can use any declaration they want
> (including in the current case of an enumeration) there is non extra
> work for the processor here. It still has to explicitly check that
> the value is either text or xml.
> 
> I suppose this isn't a substantive change, merely an editorial one.
> Change the non-normative DTD fragment in 3.1 to use CDATA rather than
> an enumeration so users are less likely to be tripped up on this
> point.
> 
> 2. (Editorial) Section 3.1 defines the parse attribute as "An
> enumeration specifying whether to include the resource as parsed XML
> or as text." I am not sure what it really mean in this context for it
> to be an "enumeration". I'm not sure that term really has meaning
> when applied to the instance document as opposed to the DTD. At most,
> it's an attribute of type enumeration. However, in practice very few
> modern parsers call out enumerated attributes as a different type
> than CDATA. (Some older parsers did this.)
> 
> I suggest removing the word "enumeration" here and rewriting as
> something like "Indicates whether to include the resource as parsed
> XML or as text."
> --
> 
>    Elliotte Rusty Harold
>    elharo@metalab.unc.edu
>    Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
>    http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
> 
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaula
it
> A

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 2004 17:51:38 UTC