xml-dev - RE: </> as end tag

[Jon.Bosak@eng.Sun.COM (Jon Bosak)]

[Chris Lovett:]

| This is totally optional and experimental.  The only rational is that
| for large documents or documents with long tag names, this saves a lot
| of bytes.

Tests have shown that this difference disappears under compression.

| Think of it as a kind of compression technique that would
| only be enabled when both ends of the pipe can handle it.

Empty end tags are a well formedness error, and the behavior of a
conforming XML processor upon encountering such an error is to stop
parsing.

The prohibition on empty end tags was adopted specifically to enable
users to perform a large class of maintenance operations on XML
documents without having to buy commercial software.  I'm having a
very difficult time seeing this as anything but a blatant attempt to
subvert the standard by implementing a nonstandard feature in a widely
disseminated parser.  Please help me to understand this differently.

Jon


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