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Re: Why embed a fake comment inside an element?

• From: Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2021 21:43:34 +0000

On 19/02/2021 20:18, G. Ken Holman wrote:

An XML processor is allowed to ignore incoming comments in its processing.

https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#dt-comment

an XML processor may, but need not, make it possible for an application to retrieve the text of comments.

Wrapping it in CDATA will mean the processor won't recognize it as a comment because it is a string, the processor will preserve the CDATA, will emit the text, and the resulting text would be interpreted as a comment by a downstream processor.

No risk of losing the data on input.

That's my guess ... I've not seen this done before, myself. Interesting.

At 2021-02-19 19:25 +0000, Roger L Costello wrote:

Hi Folks,

I am processing a bunch of XHTML documents. Some XHTML documents contain things like this:

<style>
   <![CDATA[
      <!--
          @font-face
        {font-family:"Cambria Math";
        panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
      -->
  ]]>
</style>

So, the content of the <style> element is this:
      <!--
          @font-face
        {font-family:"Cambria Math";
        panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
      -->

That looks like a comment, but it's not a comment, it's just a string. Right?

Question: Why would someone would do this? Is there a benefit to embedding a fake comment inside an element?

/Roger

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• References:
  • Re: Why embed a fake comment inside an element?
    • From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>