[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The "what is XML" permathread revisited -- was Re: [xml-de
On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 11:57:21AM -0400, Rich Salz wrote: > > Can we stop arguing about whether a binary alternative to XML > >is, can, or should be called "XML"? The case has been made over and > >over again that if it ain't pointy brackets and all the other stuff in > >the XML specifications, then it ain't XML! > > I think that when even a W3C Activity Lead uses the "wrong" term, as > recently as a couple of weeks ago, that it is premature to call for an > end to discussion about the terminology. I've tried to be very careful in my use of terminology; I don't claim to be infallible, although where I've used variations it's (at least sometimes) been deliberate... Some possibilities in the future might include, for example, a format or framework for interchange at the infoset level, or even a direct encoding that can be declared in an XML encoding declaration, <?xml version="1.1" encoding="w3c-binary-thingie-1.0"?> (in which case no revision to XML is needed; this is sneaky, rather like Tim Bray's character entity proposal a while ago, and the name "binary XML encoding" would be appropriate) There's nothing in the XML Specification that requires specific code points to be transmitted for pointy brackets. You can transmit an EBCDIC-encoded file if you like. The XML Processor is responsible for mapping to Unicode code points. As Rich Salz points out, there is not complete consensus. Best, Liam -- Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
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