• From: "Andrew Welch" <andrew.j.welch@g...>
• To: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:49:23 +0000

Another two perhaps:

- Make it impossible to change the default namespace: an element
without a prefix is in no namespace

- Remove the concept of significant whitespace by getting rid of the
mixed content model: a text node cannot have a sibling element, and
equally an element can only have a single text node.  All whitespace
only text nodes become insignificant and are stripped by default.
Document centric becomes data centric.

I think the first one is a good idea, it could even be considered best
practice now especially in a multiple namespace situation.

The second is initially less convincing (and who knows might break
some ancient markup rule) but could provide the biggest gains -
whitespace causes a lot a of problems both with learning, processing
and (as I understand it) from an implementers perspective so a change
there would have a large impact.

Wrapping text nodes in some element in document markup might seem
horrible, but if you think of XML as the disk based representation of
some other view of the data then it doesn't really matter.  Plus if
you are looking directly at the XML then can format/indent it to make
it readable without fear of breaking it.


cheers
-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/

• References:
  • ten years later, time to repeat it?
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: ten years later, time to repeat it?
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
  • RE: ten years later, time to repeat it?
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>