xml-dev - RE: IDL?

[David Megginson <ak117@freenet.carleton.ca>]

Paul Grosso writes:

 > >My guess is that the level-one DOM includes comments only to support
 > >messed-up HTML-related tools that hide what should be processing
 > >instructions in comments.  I don't know if we really want to dirty
 > >ourselves with this in XML, unless we can come up with a compelling reason.
 > 
 > Your guess is wrong.
 > 
 > The DOM has several reference applications including editors and
 > data repositories, and retention of comments is a requirement for
 > these applications.  This is true for XML and has nothing to do 
 > with "dirty" use of comments in HTML.

Yes, but is the level-one DOM the right place for such information?

The preservation of comments is certainly important for authoring
tools, but _much_ more important is the preservation of general entity
references in data and in attribute values, neither of which the
current draft of the level-one DOM supports.

Perhaps both comments and general entity references belong more
properly in a level-two DOM rather than in level one, since they deal
with lexical issues rather than logical structure.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117@freenet.carleton.ca
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins@microstar.com
      http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/

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