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Re: Simplify XML Now? (Was RE: Re: Hostilityto "bin

• To: cr88192 <cr88192@h...>
• Subject: Re: Simplify XML Now? (Was RE: Re: Hostilityto "binary XML" (was Re: XML 2004 weblog items?))
• From: Jeff Rafter <lists@j...>
• Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:08:38 -0800
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <BAY1-DAV12DFBE57A659F607DF79C1E4C70@p...>
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> I think someone else suggested using '%'.

I believe this was Jimmy Cerra on Danny Ayers blog comments... just a 
guess though:

http://dannyayers.com/archives/2004/11/05/exorcising-qnames/

> imo I would be ok with '%' and not actally changing things at the parser 
> level (processing of them would still be left to layers above the 
> parser). I will draw an analogy, eg, with c's printf syntax. printf's 
> syntax isn't part of the core language, but at the same time makes 
> things more flexible. people, however, realize in many cases to be 
> careful with '%', as probably those dealing with a modified syntax would.
> probably %% could be used as an escaped form of %.

This feels like a very dangerous idea-- of course this is probably just 
because I just got done implementing changes in AElfred for everything 
entities. if anything in XML is going to be escaped there are existing 
mechanisms to do this:

   % &percent; &perc; etc...

Secondly, there are probably hundreds of thousands of documents 
(probably more) that utilize % in content already because it was 
specifically allowed and carried no importance in content. The hours 
upon hours to make such a backward incompatible change would render it 
unusable.

I think that this problem can only be solved in one of two ways... (a) 
eliminating namespaces altogether or (b) add a new layer. Though many of 
us would like to eliminate namespaces, many wouldn't-- and the backward 
compatibility issue will hurt us for a long time... adding a new layer 
is disagreeable as well, but plausible. Something along the lines of the 
XML Schema key-keyref mechanism (which I tend to avoid) is a step in the 
right direction-- but there is probably a more elegant solution similar 
to xml:id. I am not sure what that is though... just a hunch.

Cheers,
Jeff Rafter

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• References:
  • Simplify XML Now? (Was RE: Re: Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: XML 2004 weblog items?))
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
  • Re: Simplify XML Now? (Was RE: Re: Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: XML 2004 weblog items?))
    • From: "cr88192" <cr88192@h...>

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