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RE: </> as end tag

• From: Chris Lovett <clovett@m...>
• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <SimonStL@c...>, "Xml-Dev (E-mail)" <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 17:27:01 -0800

This is totally optional and experimental.  The only rational is that for
large documents or documents with long tag names, this saves a lot of bytes.
Think of it as a kind of compression technique that would only be enabled
when both ends of the pipe can handle it.

As for the ampersands, this is a real problem.  We found with our experience
with CDF that customers just can't handle putting & inside their URL's.
We want to comply with XML standards, but we also want XML to be successful
in the marketplace.  One area that we didn't compromise is with case
sensitivity.  The new parser is fully case sensitive - but with a switch
that sets it back to case insensitive for those people that are reading XML
that was generated before case sensitivity was decided.  You have to make
some tough compromizes sometimes.  
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Simon St.Laurent [SMTP:SimonStL@c...]
> Sent:	Saturday, November 01, 1997 5:43 PM
> To:	Xml-Dev (E-mail)
> Subject:	</> as end tag
> 
> While looking over the release notes for the 31 October 97 version of the
> Java 
> MSXML parser, I noticed that they've added a 'feature' that allows for
> 'Short 
> end tags,' using </>.  This won't be too difficult to implement, perhaps,
> but 
> it seems like an odd break with XML's (so far) rather strict rules for
> start 
> and end tags, particularly 3.1 of the 7 August 97 Working Draft:
> 
> >The end of every element may (for elements which are not empty, must) be 
> marked by an end-tag containing >a name that echoes the element's type as 
> given in the start-tag...
> >Well-Formedness Constraint - GI Match:
> >The Name in an element's end-tag must match that in the start-tag.
> 
> Is this something new going on with the spec, or is it just Microsoft?  It
> 
> looks like they fixed a lot of the bugs, but this may introduce some new 
> problems.  (They also allow ampersands in PCDATA, as long as they're 'not 
> followed by a valid name character.)  It seems a little early for XML to
> begin 
> fragmenting.
> 
> Source: http://www.microsoft.com/standards/xml/xmlchgs.htm.
> 
> Simon St.Laurent
> 
> 
> 
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• Follow-Ups:
  • Ampersand in URLs (was: RE: </> as end tag)
    • From: dgd@c... (David G. Durand)
  • RE: </> as end tag
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@q...>
  • Unescaped '&'
    • From: Richard Light <richard@l...>
  • RE: </> as end tag
    • From: Jon.Bosak@e... (Jon Bosak)

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