RE: Identifying absent behavior

Philip Chan writes:

>> It seems to me that there is no difference between <t></t> and <t/> 
according to schema definition

It's not schema that makes them the same, it's XML.  From [1]:

[Definition: An element with no content is said to be empty.] The 
representation of an empty element is either a start-tag immediately 
followed by an end-tag, or an empty-element tag. [Definition: An 
empty-element tag takes a special form:]  In the XML Infoset 
Recommendation [2], which schema uses as its input, the two are 
indistinguishable.  So, schema essentially can't tell the difference if it 
wants to.  DTD's have the same characteristic (though use of the <t/> form 
is encouraged for elements explicitly declared as EMPTY).

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-starttags
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/#infoitem.element

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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 Wednesday, 7 November 2001 11:03:01 UTC