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> I don't want to dumb XML down. But we do sometimes need to store data (e.g. > WebDAV property values) which can potentially contain characters that are > not permitted in XML. In fact, it's very unlikely that a WebDAV property > value will contain such a character, but the software still needs to allow > for the possibility. Why would someone want to use XML if they need to transmit illegal characters? There are usually two cases -- one is where the illegal characters are insignificant, in which case they can be stripped and the output is well-formed XML. The other case is where the illegal characters *are* significant, and must be preserved for round-trip. But if someone wants to round-trip characters that are clearly not permitted by any XML processor in the world, why use XML? That's like getting mad because a car won't float. > arguments. I guess the C lobby is sufficiently entrenched that we'll never > allow �, but apart from that I don't really see the need for > restrictions. But that is exactly the point: even if we started again from scratch, there exists a subset of characters that will end up being illegal. There will also exist a certain population of users who disagree with each illegal character choice. There will additionally be a certain population of implementers who disagree with the *permissiveness* of the characters, since it makes their lives difficult, and they have to handle characters in a way that is unnatural (NEL for Unix people, for example). So my point is that the set of illegal characters will always be an arbitrary value-judgment that tries to balance between implementers and users. I do not think it is an objective "there is one right answer" situation.
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