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What is an XML Document? [Was: Re: canonicalization]

• To: veillard@r...
• Subject: What is an XML Document? [Was: Re: canonicalization]
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 22:40:23 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <20020304194440.S18835@r...>
• References: <1015178176.5268.43.camel@l...><p04330104b8a8106aa395@[192.168.254.4]><1015193078.3350.61.camel@l...><p04330107b8a85bc15730@[192.168.254.4]><1015201142.3309.108.camel@l...><3C82B747.5020609@t...> <20020304025635.C18835@r...><3C833AB2.3040807@t...> <20020304043645.E18835@r...><5.1.0.14.2.20020304104526.027d51b0@p...><20020304194440.S18835@r...>

At 7:44 PM -0500 3/4/02, Daniel Veillard wrote:


>   I would be tempted to tease and ask what is an XML document (would
>the TAG ever find the answer ;-) . I also note that in use case like
>the Jabber protocol, you never end-up with a "fully composed document"
>it only exists once the processing is finished and that it had become
>useless.

Is this really a problem? According to the XML spec "A data object is 
an XML document if it is well-formed, as defined in this 
specification." That does leave the question of what a data object 
is, but I think a reasonable answer is "a sequence of bytes or a 
sequence of Unicode characters". Pretty clearly the spec does not 
intend that a data object be a traditional OOP object of some kind.

I do wish the spec made that last point explicit, but I do think it 
won't get anybody into trouble and might indeed pull a few developers 
people out of the quicksand they've mired themselves in by believing 
things like objects can be XML documents instead of representation of 
an XML document. (To cite a classic OOP example, nobody believes a 
Car object is a car. Why do developers insist on claiming Document 
objects are documents?)
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|             http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: What is an XML Document? [Was: Re: canonicalization]
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>

• References:
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
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    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
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    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: canonicalization
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>
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    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
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