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Re: [SML] Whether to support Attribute or not?

• From: Joe Lapp <jlapp@w...>
• To: xml-dev@i...
• Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 16:18:24 -0500

Haven't heard from anybody on my attribute-value vs. content positioning:

  http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/xml-dev-Nov-1999/1137.html

In any case, I see value to the end user in being able to succinctly
represent data using attributes.  Users want readable XML.  Although I'm
usually in the use-elements-not-attributes camp, it's not clear to me that
we should enforce this.  Not having attributes may cost SML significant
user base.

I only wish it were a syntactic trick and not also a semantic one.  I wish
XML had made the following two elements equivalent:

  <product><price>$1.00</price></product>

  <product price="$1.00"/>

Namespaces would have been simpler, users wouldn't have had to worry over
whether to design attributes or elements into the doctype, and supporting
technologies such as XPath would be more robust, as queries would then
survive syntactic changes in the underlying doctype.

Is there any way to fix this in SML?  Are we bound by semantic
compatibility with XML processors?

... plus we need a way to support XML namespaces (see that SML thread).
--
Joe Lapp                     (Looking for some good people to
Senior Engineer               help create XML technologies that
http://www.webMethods.com     connect businesses to businesses
jlapp@w...          over the web.)

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