[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Letting well-formedness slip: was A milestone in XML
At 05:08 AM 5/17/99 +0000, Jonathan Eisenzopf wrote: [re: CDF] >Of course, Matt's correct and I don't think we should back >down on pressing the issue. It does beg the question, what >to do with older parsers and XML files? Check the declaration >before parsing or just ignore and let it fail? As long as it's >not built into the parser one can easily handle the uppercase >declarations. CDF isn't going to go anywhere further unless they clean up their code and become 'genuine' XML. A key part of XML's infrastructure is that any XML document should work in any XML parser, and the only parser I'm aware of that provides 'legacy' compatibility for CDF's approach is Microsoft's. (DataChannel may have inherited it.) Microsoft could post a simple CDF-fixer application, change their examples, push 'real' XML syntax for CDF. I haven't seen this yet, though I'd certainly welcome it. The point of XML is not to accomodate ideas Microsoft had while XML was still in development - the point of XML seems to be to create a format that different programs on different platforms can always read reliably. Accomodating Microsoft's 'goof' is a hassle for parser designers and application designers, and it seems much more reasonable for Microsoft to recommend that people change their CDF from the old format (which only works in MS-land) to 'true' XML, which will work in both MS-land and the rest of the XML universe. Pre-processing information that's supposed to be XML already before feeding it to the parser doesn't seem like an especially good use of resources, to say the least, and mangles the parser component architectures already in widespread use. Simon St.Laurent XML: A Primer / Building XML Applications (June) Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies http://www.simonstl.com 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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