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Re: Keeping ISO 8879 Alive (was RE: Markup perspecti

• To: mc@x... (Mike Champion)
• Subject: Re: Keeping ISO 8879 Alive (was RE: Markup perspective not code)
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 13:19:19 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: xml-dev@l... (XML DEV)
• In-reply-to: <D91T1X2X96DBWTURB9RQXSRNXU612X1W.3d4aab68@MChamp> from "Mike Champion" at Aug 02, 2002 11:55:20 AM

Mike Champion scripsit:

> "Infoset" people can also be minimalists, or they
> may have stopped worrying and learned to love the PSVI, the XQuery
> type system, etc.

Oddly, even being an editor of the Infoset I'm still more of a syntax
person.

> Another way forward, which I doubt if many people will agree with,
> might be refactor things along SGML "markup for authors" and
> XML "infoset for programmers" lines.  Agree on a basic syntax
> for XML 2.0 that removes most the stuff that the infoset throws away
> and causes the DOM (which basically tries to live in both the
> syntax and InfoSet worlds) fits, such as DTDs, entities, entity references,
> CDATA sections.  That's not to say that people should stop using
> entities and CDATA sections, just to say that they "properly" belong in
> the SGML world where "syntax sugar" is respected and supported.  

What I'd like to see for XML 2.0 is a clean separation into two layers:
a "top layer" that understands elements, attributes, namespaces, ids, and PIs;
and a "bottom layer" that understands character references (by name or number),
comments, and literal sections.  Each layer would be separately processable;
perhaps it would be good for all bottom-layer constructs to be introduced
by "&", e.g. "&-- ... &--" for comments and "&< ... &>" for literal sections.
This would mean a break with the reference concrete syntax of SGML, but
perhaps would still be declarable as a concrete syntax -- I don't know enough
to say if that's true.

-- 
One art / There is                      John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
No less / No more                       http://www.reutershealth.com
All things / To do                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
With sparks / Galore                     -- Douglas Hofstadter

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Keeping ISO 8879 Alive (was RE: Markup perspective not code)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

• References:
  • Keeping ISO 8879 Alive (was RE: Markup perspective not code)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

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