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Re: Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and easier to aut

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Suggestions for a slightly less verbose (and easier to author) XML
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 16:41:43 -0400
• In-reply-to: <016901c21af5$f5275320$0200a8c0@e...>

At 09:38 PM 6/23/2002 +0100, Rob Lugt wrote:
>Last week there were a few posts regarding making XML less verbose.  I'm
>quite sure these suggestions must have been aired before, but how about
>adding the following simplifications to XML 1.2?
>
>1)  Allow </> as an abbreviation for any closing tag.  After all
><xsl:template>...</xsl:template> is rather long-winded and the element name
>in the closing tag is completely redundant.  I believe the closing tag
>syntax is probably a throw-back to SGML compatibility, but if XML 1.x
>discards that baggage then I think this would be a good thing to do.  I for
>one get fed up with typing this redundant information especially when
>authoring XSLT stylesheets.

I'll admit to getting fed up with typing end-tags on occasion.  However, I 
find typing it far simpler than trying to sort out the meaning of:
</></></>

Figuring out where the end tags belong can still become a non-trivial 
problem quite rapidly.

If you want that short form, or any of the other short forms you list, I'd 
strongly recommend writing some simple code that converts from the short 
form to the more verbose XML 1.0.

Publish it as a separate spec, see if people will write those tools, and 
run with it.

Simon St.Laurent
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue

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