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Re: syntax (was RE: What is "the Web")

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: syntax (was RE: What is "the Web")
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 15:10:56 -0400
• In-reply-to: <1019846465.825.62.camel@l...>

4/26/2002 2:41:04 PM, "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...> wrote:


>I'm not expecting the entire world to use XML syntax - it's not ideal
>for everything - but when it's time to present a canonical and
>processable view of information, it's glorious stuff. 

I presume that most of us agree in principle.  There are a few
smokestacks spoiling the glorious view, however:

1- Not all syntax is canonical; you need something like the 
InfoSet to say that single/double quotes don't matter, etc..

2 - Some syntax is sugar, but sugar is tasty: CDATA sections come to
mind; they're nice for some things (escaping scripts being the
canonical example) but they'll disappear from your syntax if you run 
it through XSLT.

3 - There's a lot of inefficiency in that syntax, either for humans
to produce, or to stuff down narrow bandwidths to small devices, or
whatever.  

4 - For better or worse, many recent specs are not based on the 
syntax  -- XPath/XQuery, SOAP, DOM (of course).  This produces
an impedence mismatch.

So, how do you deal with all this and still enjoy the view?

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