XMLP WG closure of Issue 266

The XML Protocol (XMLP) WG has decided to close issue
266 [1], which you originated, with the following
resolution.

The XMLP WG has decided to close this issue without any
change to the SOAP Data Model and without any change to
the SOAP Encoding. The XMLP WG recognizes the general
importance of enabling I18N, however SOAP's model and
serialization is designed for interfacing with
programming languages many of which we believe would be
incapable of dealing with the resulting marked up text.
Indeed, there has been early experience (e.g. on
"soapbuilders") binding the SOAP Encoding to a large
number of widely deployed systems (e.g. Java, .Net,
etc.) We have reason to believe that most, perhaps all
of these would be incapable of effeciently representing
(e.g. in their Unicode string types) the sort of marked
up text that is conveyed by mixed content.

We realize that this decision is at best a practical
compromise from the point of view of i18n.  We
believe, however, that the sensible order of attack on
this problem is to first encourage the development of
programming systems that can indeed efficiently
manipulate such richly structured text.  At that point,
it would indeed be sensible to consider "raising the
bar" and providing at least an option for mixed content
in the SOAP encoding.  In the meantime, we do not
believe that we can adopt an approach that would
substantially break most or all of our existing users'
implementations.

The XMLP WG notes that the SOAP Data Model and Encoding
are optional, and the SOAP framework allows someone to
create their own model with a serialisation that
provides mixed content.

We hope that this resolution satisfies your
concern. If not, please contact the WG asap.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-lc-issues#x266



............................................
David C. Fallside, IBM
Ext Ph: 530.477.7169
Int  Ph: 544.9665
fallside@us.ibm.com

Received on Friday, 2 August 2002 11:13:42 UTC