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Re: Attribute Order (Was: Create XML )


idiom hand waving
David Megginson wrote:

>   <a>
>    <href>http://www.megginson.com/</href>
>    Megginson Technologies Ltd.
>   </a>
> 
> instead of
> 
>   <a href="http://www.megginson.com/">Megginson Technologies Ltd.</a>

This is the one that did it for me.  I always felt vaguely guilty about 
the existence of attributes, but that <a href="x">y</a> idiom seems so 
smooth and more idiomatic than any other syntax I can imagine, that it 
long ago reconciled me to them.  I haven't been able to work out the 
abstractions and metaphysics of why this feels so right, beyond vague 
hand-waving about two syntax flavors for when you're wrapping up two 
really different kinds of things.  But then why not five?  I think 
unordered attributes, and dictionary type structures to model them in 
software, are way out on the plus side of the cost-benefit equation as a 
design decision in SGML and XML.

-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray
         (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)



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