Non-conformant XML-parsers..

[Michael Kay]

Because the spec allows implementation-defined serialization attributes, 
I'm inclined to the view that if there's a user demand, implementors 
will add the feature, and if enough implementors add it, it becomes 
worth standardizing. Some of the existing options, such as 
omit-content-type and suppress-indentation, got into the standard having 
first appeared as Saxon extensions.

There's a steady trickle of requests to provide serialization options to 
control things that shouldn't make any difference: empty tags, choice of 
quotes for attribute delimiters, use of entities and character 
references, details of indentation, etc etc. It's hard to know where to 
draw the line.

The existence of non-conformant XML parsers isn't a use case that is 
likely to carry much weight with the W3C WGs, unless perhaps it's a 
non-conformance that is very widespread and exists for a good reason, 
such as conflicts between different specifications.

Michael Kay
Saxonica

On 06/04/2012 06:41, Geert Josten wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I noticed this question on stackoverflow:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10027737/xquery-should-give-me-proper-c
> losed-tags-for-empty-node-sql-server-2008
>
> Apparently SQLServer has trouble processing the short notation of empty
> elements. It got me thinking though, the new serialization spec gives
> quite some strength for tweaking the output, but not influence tiny things
> like notation of empty elements. Maybe this isn't the most appropriate
> list asking this, but I'm asking here anyhow: hasn't it been given thought
> to add some flags that allow end users to tweak the output more
> extensively? Like a short-empty-elements="no", things like that?
>
> I also used to work with a language that allowed so-called productions
> from in-memory trees. (It was a language much alike XSLT, but older.) It
> allowed writing production rules for each element, to control how things
> should be serialized. Not sure how that would help here, but thought I'd
> mention it anyway..
>
> Cheers,
> Geert
>
>
> M.Sc. G.P.H. (Geert) Josten
> Senior Developer
>
>
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