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Re: Principles of XML design

• To: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Subject: Re: Principles of XML design
• From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 08:36:05 -0400
• Cc: XML List Developers <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <e02798929af1567a4b8191c7a8be8c29@r...>
• References: <20050506170322.498F52A46A2@m...> <0fa13582277ef91a61197ef274c686b8@r...> <be524b26c07df26e1469df591cd17742@b...> <e02798929af1567a4b8191c7a8be8c29@r...>
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Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:

> If you define what a conformant XML processor *is*, I might agree with 
> you. If I have a processor that understand the grammar of well-formed 
> XML, but emits a boolean value (parsed or not), is that a conformant 
> processor?

That's a very good question. In practice, I find it more useful to talk 
about a conformant SAX processor, DOM processor, etc. I'd like to talk 
about a conformant XPath engine or XSLT processor as well but those 
working groups decided to shoot themselves in the feet when it came to 
conformance testing.

I do wonder if the attribute order issue suggests a possible way out of 
the conundrum though. Attribute order in XML is not significant, period. 
This was required not by the original first edition XML spec but by the 
SGML spec which XML 1.0, first edition, incorporates by reference.

Does this same SGML spec place any other requirements on SGML and by 
extension XML processors? In particular does it mandate anything that an 
SGML processor is expected to return to client applications? Do any of 
the SGML gurus on the list happen to know that?

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@m...
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

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