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Re: The subsetting has begun

• To: XML Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: The subsetting has begun
• From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 07:16:26 -0800
• In-reply-to: <oprk4q34aeezizxn@s...>
• References: <oprk4q34aeezizxn@s...> <B885BEDCB3664E4AB1C72F1D85CB29F804B54D2C@R...> <3E5ABD9B.2050600@d...>

Mike Champion wrote:

> [...]
> I'm sure there's a few thousand people out there who would be happy users
> of pure syntax XML tools such as SAX, [...]

Waitaminnit -- since when is SAX "pure syntax"?
SAX is the quintessential implementation of the XML Infoset!
All non-Infoset syntactic features of the source document
are stripped out; the application only sees (a representation
of) the abstract information items.

> [...]  I wish people would just acknowledge that the XML syntax and
> Infoset(s) were joined at birth (every well-formed XML document can be
> parsed into a tree).

Or in other words: there is an abstract syntax behind
the concrete grammar productions in the XML 1.0 REC.

> Then maybe we could do what has to be done to make the
> actual Infoset spec more useful (e.g., by making the language less awkward,
> such as "element" rather than "element information item" [gag]),

The language may be awkward, but the "information item"
qualifier is absolutely necessary in order to distinguish
an "element" (the sequence of characters from the opening '<'
in the start-tag to the closing '>' in the end-tag) from
an "element" (the thing with a name, set of attributes,
and list of children).

> and making
> it as formally rigorous as the syntax spec (somebody said that this could
> be done with ASN.1, but I don't know that).

IMO, the level of rigor in the XML Infoset REC is just
about right.  It lists the essential information content
of a parsed document, without constraining the way that
information is represented.  ASN.1 would be a gross
overspecification.


--Joe English

  jenglish@f...

• Follow-Ups:
  • Pure syntax vs the Infoset permathread (was Re: Thesubsetting has begun)
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>

• References:
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • RE: The subsetting has begun
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill@d...>

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