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Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDATA blocks

• From: "Karr, David" <david.karr@w...>
• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:02:40 -0700

I pointed out to a client that they're seeing failures parsing XML because some of the element content that they're producing contains characters illegal in XML content, like "&" (unencoded).  They acknowledged that should be fixed, but they also said they could instead enclose all content with CDATA blocks.  That seems bizarre to me, but I'm not sure I can immediately come up with all the cogent arguments against that.  Can someone summarize specifically why you should NOT do that?

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all contentin CDATA blocks
    • From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all contentin CDATA blocks
    • From: Felix Sasaki <fsasaki@w...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDATA blocks
    • From: Marcus Carr <mcarr@a...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDATA blocks
    • From: "Andrew Welch" <andrew.j.welch@g...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all contentin CDATA blocks
    • From: Chin Chee-Kai <cheekai@s...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all contentin CDATA blocks
    • From: Philippe Poulard <philippe.poulard@s...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDATA blocks
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
  • Re: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all contentin CDATA blocks
    • From: Manos Batsis <manos_lists@g...>
  • RE: Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDATA blocks
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>