RE: Proposed Clarification for Issues 4 and 23

I'm not sure that there would be much complexity added by allowing
processing instructions.  Parsing-wise, they are on the same level of
ease as comments, which SOAP allows.[1]  Semantically, my understanding
is that processing instructions in XML generally are always safe to
ignore except by applications that are coded specifically to recognize
specific processing instructions.  So, in general, any application that
is not coded to process a specific PI may ignore it.  Unless my
understanding of PIs is mistaken, that should make for a fairly short
discussion, much as Henrik proposed.

PIs have some utility.  For example, one might put a stylesheet PI into
a SOAP message so that it would look nicely rendered in a browser or
email, and not just look like raw XML.  This could be helpful in getting
more SOAP/XMLP adoption and also helpful in getting email messages to be
transmitted as SOAP/XMLP messages. Just an idea.


[1] Processing Instructions, XML 1.0 spec,
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210#dt-pi

-----Original Message-----
From: Noah_Mendelsohn@lotus.com [mailto:Noah_Mendelsohn@lotus.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 2:35 PM
To: Rich Salz
Cc: Henrik Frystyk Nielsen; xml-dist-app@w3.org
Subject: Re: Proposed Clarification for Issues 4 and 23


Are we sure we want to get into PI's?  One of the nice things about 
writing an efficient SOAP processor is you don't need to deal with quite

all the minutia of general XML.  As this discussion illustrates, even 
small features like PI cause complexity:  must you fault?  can you
fault? 
what does it mean to understand a PI?  If SOAP doesn't allow PI, do we 
really have sufficiently compelling reasons to reintroduce them?  Also,
it 
feels to me like there might be some question as to which PI's are to be

interpreted generically to the envelope, and which would have to be 
understood by the code processing, for example, a header.  Are we sure
the 
value outweighs the added details to be gotten right (in both spec and 
code?)

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Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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Received on Thursday, 21 June 2001 20:52:13 UTC