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Re: The subsetting has begun

• To: Jon.Ellis@S...
• Subject: Re: The subsetting has begun
• From: Amelia A.Lewis <amyzing@t...>
• Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 22:04:51 -0500
• Cc: mc@x..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <1234642.1045878962142.JavaMail.jje@u...>
• Organization: The Mysthical World of Talsever!
• References: <1234642.1045878962142.JavaMail.jje@u...>

On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 09:56:02 +0800 (SGT)
Jon.Ellis@S... wrote:
> Mike Champion <mc@x...> wrote: 
> >So why do you think they are bothering to implement
> >only a subset if full compliance is "hardly onerous?" 
> 
> Makes you wonder doesn't it ;-)
> 
> The footprint requirements just don't appear allow it. There are more
> productions to process the DTD than the XML document, and that's
> before you have to deal with what you find there.

This sounds like reason to say "may ignore", not "must generate an
error".  The difficulty with "must generate an error" is that it is not
only not an error, but is a requirement, for some other application
areas.  And these are potentially application areas with which the
embedded systems may interact.

At present, there is no way to specify boilerplate, repeated multiple
times in a document, without using entities and the internal subset. 
That's a for instance.  SOAP doesn't dispense with the doctype
declaration on the basis of efficiency (or not according to the current
arguments, at any rate).  It disallows it on the basis of
'encapsulation' (an equally invalid argument for SOAP, in my opinion,
but whatever).

The argument of encapsulation, unfortunately, leads directly to the
forbidding of the xml declaration as well, because it has the same
characteristics of uniqueness and required position.  So it's good, I
suppose, that that's not the argument made for the embedded space ...
but creating errors in the embedded space, rather than simply ignoring
something, seems folly, to me.  Forbid the external subset.  Forbit,
even, the internal subset.  Allow doctypes, though, because some things
*do* require them, or recommend them so strongly as to be best practice.

Amy!
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
"How does one hate a country, or love one? ... What is love of one's
country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is
it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue
of it, or a profession."
                -- Therem Harth rem ir Estraven

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    • From: Jon.Ellis@S...

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