RE: Disable Output Escaping - really useful

David Carlisle wrote:
> Any use of disable-output-encoding is _always_ a hack.

My experience has led me to this conclusion as well.  I'm glad this feature
is available, because sometimes you need the ability to hack output.

An example of the problems disable-output-escaping allows:  MSXML can be
used to generate a text stream as the result of a transformation, as with
node.transformNode(xsl), or it can create a new XML document, as with
node.transformNodeToObject(xsl,newdoc).  In some cases,
disable-output-encoding can cause a transform that succeeds when processed
to a stream to fail when creating a new document.  A feature that allows a
legal stylesheet to fail in certain contexts should indeed be considered as
enabling hacks rather than a core feature of the language, and should be
used with caution.

For HTML embedded as text in a database, I've found that the cleanest
architecture is to embed HTML markup in the XML document as well-formed XML,
distinguished by the xhtml namespace if necessary.  While this means
cleaning up data early on, it significantly reduces the potential for
headaches later on.  For instance, structurally embedded HTML can be queried
structurally, have additional metadata embedded in it, or be extended with
other namespaces.  If it's embedded as CDATA, none of these options are
available.  From an XML perspective, HTML stored as text in a database is a
legacy problem due to the limitations of traditional databases to handle the
structure implied of markup - something XML is intended to correct.

- Jonathan Marsh
  Microsoft


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