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Re: relying on ordering of sibling XML elements

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: relying on ordering of sibling XML elements
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 13:02:32 -0400
• References: <20020803160108.92831.qmail@w...>

[Glen Mazza]
>
> Question - does "proper" XML document design permit
> deriving a semantic meaning from the ordering of XML
> sibling elements?
>

Yes and no.  As Richard Tobin just posted, the order of the documents is
significant in XML.  On the other hand, the semantic value of having an
order is up to you.  XML says nothing about it.  You are free to equate
document order with physical order in the bookshelf if you want to, and XML
will respect that order for you.

After all, even if you explicitly specify the position with the "position"
attribute, the document still know nothing about what you mean - is it
left-to-right position?  What happens at the end of a bookshelf?

So either way is fine, and XML will respect the element order so you might
as well use that.

Cheers,

Tom P

> For example, if I want to have books A, B, C, D on a
> bookshelf in a certain order:  from left-right: D, A,
> C, B.
>
> relying on order of elements:
>
> <bookshelf>
>     <book>d</book>
>     <book>a</book>
>     <book>c</book>
>     <book>b</book>
> </bookshelf>
>
> Or is it more correct to add an attribute, like
> "position" below:
>
> <bookshelf>
>     <book position="1">d</book>
>     <book position="2">a</book>
>     <book position="3">c</book>
>     <book position="4">b</book>
> </bookshelf>
>

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