[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Error and Fatal Error
Exactly. XML is a maximum expectation from minimum compliance contract. If you can simply get the few rules there are right, it just works because the contract is quite specific and both by practice and agreement, no variations are acceptable. KISS. Programming lets us do a lot of tricks. It doesn't mean we should. Replacement of the tag characters is certainly possible and SGML allows it. But SGMLers wisely decided to abhor the SGML Declaration as a means of network system description with the sole exception of the one James Clark wrote for XML. Possibly more than even the spec, it's the XML Constitution for those who can read it. This doesn't do more than solve the problem of the syntax parse but that minimum expectation hits the sweet spot between the things worth catching, basically typing errors (as in hitting the keys with tired eyes) and slouching for markers. I entered over four hundred lines of repetitive lines of XML in Notepad43 today. Five input errors. Time to find: about a second and fix: two minutes. Given to the next processor, one FOSI declaration to fix by adding an e-i-c. Time since last time I debugged one of those: 18 years. To print rendering engine, less than two. Why? It's all declarative XML. All you have to do is stare at the structure and the properties you are setting are just there. Best seats in the halls of karma. len -----Original Message----- From: Jim Melton [mailto:jim.melton@oracle.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:35 PM To: stephengreenubl@gmail.com Cc: Toby.Considine@gmail.com; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: Error and Fatal Error Stephen, At 7/18/2011 01:14 PM, Stephen D Green wrote: >The problem is that there are tags in the strings - it is XML. >System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape and HtmlEncode >would change the angle brackets in the tags too. I suggest that you've failed to accept what many have been telling you: The presence of angle brackets around sequences of certain characters might create "tags", but that does not make it XML. "XML" is a well-defined language. Claiming that text such as; <elem attr="<"&<Bob"/> is XML doesn't make it so. There are explicit rules in the definition of the language XML that prohibit attribute values containing <, &, and the quoting character itself unless they are properly "escaped". Violation of those rules means that the text doesn't meet the definition of XML. Would you, for example, expect a C processor to process this text properly: switch (flag] { ... ) even though the right square bracket was pretty "obviously" supposed to be a right parenthesis and the right parenthesis a right curly brace? I haven't encountered a C processor that would make those corrections -- they all seem to report syntax errors and expect me to make the corrections. I don't find that unreasonable. I'm no longer a software developer (although I was for many, many years), and yet I've been able to write fairly simple code in a couple of different languages that pseudo-parses input text that claims to be XML, locates certain aberrations that my application typically produces (e.g., & and < in what were intended to be attribute values, -- in what were intended to be comments), and corrects those specific errors (e.g., replacement with character references and insertion of a space between the hyphens). Full parsing is rarely needed, depending on the precise errors that you intend to fix. I'm sure that you can do the same without significant overhead. Hope this helps, Jim ======================================================================== Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL) Phone: +1.801.942.0144 Chair, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32 and W3C XML Query WG Fax : +1.801.942.3345 Oracle Corporation Oracle Email: jim dot melton at oracle dot com 1930 Viscounti Drive Alternate email: jim dot melton at acm dot org Sandy, UT 84093-1063 USA Personal email: SheltieJim at xmission dot com ======================================================================== = Facts are facts. But any opinions expressed are the opinions = = only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody = = else with whom I may or may not have discussed the issues at hand. = ======================================================================== _______________________________________________________________________ XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS to support XML implementation and development. To minimize spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
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