paragraph in Section 2.4

Dear XML editor,

Below is a comment on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second
Edition). I hope this is useful.


Sincerely,

Mike McCaleb




Problem: A paragraph in Section 2.4 states:

       In the content of elements, character data is any string of
       characters which does not contain the start-delimiter of any
       markup. In a CDATA section, character data is any string of
       characters not including the CDATA-section-close delimiter,
       "]]>".


This paragraph has technical and grammatical problems. Technically, the
first sentence omits that character data in the content of an element
cannot include the CDATA-section-close delimiter (see rule number 14).
Grammatically, the use of "which" as opposed to "that" in the first
sentence is questionable (The Gregg Reference Manual, Sixth Edition,
states: "Which is always used to introduce nonessential clauses, and that
is ordinarily used to introduce essential clauses."). Furthermore, the use
of "does not include" may be more clear to the reader than "not including".


Proposed Solution:

Change:

       In the content of elements, character data is any string of
       characters which does not contain the start-delimiter of any
       markup. In a CDATA section, character data is any string of
       characters not including the CDATA-section-close delimiter,
       "]]>".

to

       In the content of elements, character data is any string of
       characters that does not contain either the start-delimiter
       of any markup or the  CDATA-section-close delimiter, "]]>".
       In a CDATA section, character data is any string of characters
       that does not include the CDATA-section-close delimiter.


----------------------------------------------

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
   <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.76 (Macintosh; U; PPC) [Netscape]">
   <title>XML Comments.html</title>
</head>
<body>
Dear XML editor,
<p>Below is a comment on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
(Second Edition). I hope this is useful.
<br>&nbsp;
<p>Sincerely,
<p>Mike McCaleb
<br>&nbsp;
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<br><b>Problem: </b>A paragraph in Section 2.4 states:
<blockquote>In the content of elements, character data is any string of
characters which does not contain the start-delimiter of any markup. In
a CDATA section, character data is any string of characters not including
the CDATA-section-close delimiter, "]]>".</blockquote>

<p><br>This paragraph has technical and grammatical problems. Technically,
the first sentence omits that character data in the content of an element
cannot include the CDATA-section-close delimiter (see rule number 14).
Grammatically, the use of "which" as opposed to "that" in the first sentence
is questionable (<i>The Gregg Reference Manual, Sixth Edition</i>, states:
"<i>Which</i> is always used to introduce nonessential clauses, and <i>that</i>
is ordinarily used to introduce essential clauses."). Furthermore, the
use of "does not include" may be more clear to the reader than "not including".
<p><b>Proposed Solution:</b>
<p>Change:
<blockquote>In the content of elements, character data is any string of
characters which does not contain the start-delimiter of any markup. In
a CDATA section, character data is any string of characters not including
the CDATA-section-close delimiter, "]]>".</blockquote>
to
<blockquote>In the content of elements, character data is any string of
characters that does not contain either the start-delimiter of any markup
or the&nbsp; CDATA-section-close delimiter, "]]>". In a CDATA section,
character data is any string of characters that does not include the
CDATA-section-close
delimiter.</blockquote>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
</body>
</html>

Received on Wednesday, 29 November 2000 14:37:18 UTC