[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Penance for misspent attributes
>I don't know. XML modellers faq: >Q: Why are you putting stuff in attributes? >A: I can't be arsed to code a buffer. There is more to it than a buffer. Parsers can and do emit chunks of content at boundaries that suit themselves. So <foo> Hello world </foo> is not guaranteed to produce 1 data event that can be slurped into a buffer in one go. More generally, in the presence of mixed content there will definitely be multiple chunks. So you end up with this pattern: start_foo: buffer = "" inFoo = 1 end_foo: print buffer characters (chunk): if inFoo: buffer.append (chunk) This rapidly gets out of hand. Rightly, the need for this pattern drives the data-heads nuts. It would be soo nice to know that in the presence of data-oriented XML, the fundamental parser layer would emit complete PCDATA chunks. Trouble is, there is no consensus on what data-oriented XML is and how it could be flagged to a processor. Consequently, data-oriented APIs that avoid that above unside-down and state-space-laden constructs such as RAX (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/04/26/rax) cannot go anywhere. An XML Features Manifest would be one way to flag it (http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/xml-dev-Dec-1999/0002.html) but that never went anywhere either:-) Oh well. Sean
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|