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PCDATA vs CDATA

• From: "Tom Otvos" <tomo@e...>
• To: "XML Dev" <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:32:52 -0400

This topic has been touched on before, somewhat, in earlier posts (as I can
glean from the archives), but I haven't found the specific answer that I am
looking for so I hope someone can help.

Why can an element's mixed content only be declared as PCDATA, not CDATA?

There are many times when the content for an element may need to be cordoned
off in a CDATA section, but it is inconvenient (and ugly) to force it to be
entered every time.  I don't understand why the decision to disallow a CDATA
declaration was made.  Parsing does not seem to be any more difficult if it
were allowed, and in cases where most leaf elements can contain content that
may be misinterpreted as markup, removing the need to explicitly include
<![CDATA[ ... ]]> everywhere could reduce the document size (and parsing
time) substantially.  The documents become far more readable as well.

In a case I am working on, many of  the elements' content in my documents
can include HTML or other data easily confused for markup.

Thanks, in advance, for any comments.

Tom Otvos
Director of Research, EveryWare Development Inc.
http://www.everyware.com/
"Try not! Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." - Yoda



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