[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: "Clean Specs"
Don Park wrote: > I do realize that the XML spec is leaky in certain respect but I felt it is > very clear as a whole although I am unable to point out exactly what makes > it so. If I may venture an opinion, the XML spec is sloppily written, informal, and poorly organized. The namespaces spec is tightly written, well-organized, and relatively formal. I believe it is the informality of the XML spec that makes it clear as a whole -- it certainly isn't the organization. For example, at the end of section 2.8, we are told that an internal DTD is interpreted before an external DTD and that one consequence of this is that attributes in the internal DTD override those in the external DTD. The spec doesn't need to tell us this consequence -- it can be determined from the statements that internal DTDs are interpreted first and that the first attribute declaration wins. However, by telling us this and similar things, we are saved a lot of hard thinking and confusion and therefore are happier with the spec and understand it better. The namespaces spec does this less often, but when it does, feels very approachable. A good example of this is the statement in section 4 about operational difficulties when default attributes are declared in external DTDs. The spec doesn't need to tell us this, but saves us a lot of time and pain when it does. -- Ron Bourret xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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