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Most of that is spilt milk now. OTOH, PIs are open to those who want to develop alternatives to specs and still use XML. It is a very neat feature from that viewpoint. PIs were heavily criticized in days of olde as a way to pollute content. In effect, they were a way to avoid precisely that. But those who used them were sidestepping the idea that all systems should interoperate based on a formal public declarations. That is the One World System viewpoint. It is seductive somewhat like a one world religion or government but inimical to the very idea it originates in: the ability to create information free of local system constraints. Ultimately, the information owner has to choose. XML, the W3C, etc., should only have a limited ability to control those choices and then only insofar as a system definition enables interoperation without unduly limiting choice. The W3C and XML are there to enable potential; not control markets. The owner has to choose wisely. As noted often here, XML is as underpowered as it is because a syntax spec enables interoperability right to the edge of limiting other choices. Otherwise, one becomes a wraith in the tunnels muttering "My precious!" after surrendering all options to the FrameworkFromMordor. len orc -----Original Message----- From: Jason Diamond [mailto:jason@i...] > PIs were a common means in SGML systems to create links. > IDEAS/IADS worked like that originally. It was the > interpretation of some that links are not really content, > they are a process/function. It is a theoretical issue at the > very heart of darkness for hypertext systems. To me, it seems obvious that the xml-stylesheet PI is not content since it's only allowed in the prolog of an XML document (before the document element). The xsi:schemaLocation attribute, on the other hand, is content (although it will most likely be ignored by processors other than schema validators). Unfortunately, just like namespace declarations, xsi:schemaLocation can appear on any element in an instance document--though it must appear before an element or attribute is encountered in the namespace described by the schema found at that location. Personally, I agree with Michael and would have rather seen something like an xml-schema PI (or a more generic xml-link PI) in the prolog--one for each namespace the document contained. This keeps the processor-specific data out of the document and makes it really easy to see exactly what the document contains from a really high-level point of view. <?xml-schema namespace='http://example.org/' href='http://example.org/schema.xsd' type='application/xsd+xml'?>
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