Re: [xml-dev] version numbers and infosets

> In terms of error messages it would make much more sense to receive "This
> parser does not support version '1.1'" than to receive a strange character
> error somewhere near the end of a 10 meg file. If for some reason, you
> wanted the 1.0 parser to attempt to parse a 1.1 document, there was already
> a system in place to do this-- leave off the <?xml?> decl.

You may not have control over that.

Also what about documents that are intentionally designed to parse
under XML 1.0 *and* 1.1? Why force a choice on the parser?
I am not sure a change of this requirement is desirable even for XML 1.1.
There is always the possibility to raise an error on the application
level, since the parser will report the version.

> Of course then
> you couldn't specify encoding in the document, but externally it would still
> be possible.
> 
> The de facto usage has been to fail on != 1.0.

Not with Expat, which is in fairly wide use.

Karl

Received on Tuesday, 23 July 2002 10:28:45 UTC