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- From: David Megginson <ak117@freenet.carleton.ca>
- To: xml-dev Mailing List <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
- Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 13:21:01 -0500
[SAX is a proposal for a simple, event-based XML API, using
callbacks. This is one in a series of ten design questions that we
need to answer to implement the API.]
Should SAX include an event for comments?
public void comment (char ch[], int length);
CON
---
- comments are purely lexical, and do not form an integral part of a
document's information set for processing (as opposed to authoring
or archiving);
- including comments in SAX might encourage comment abuses like those
common in HTML (i.e. enclosing 800 lines of JavaScript in a
comment).
PRO
---
- the DOM includes comments in the core level-one implementation;
- HyTime uses comments for lexical constraints.
MY RECOMMENDATION
-----------------
No.
SAX is not designed for authoring tools or repositories, that need to
preserve the lexical as well as the logical structure of a document,
and there is no compelling reason to report comments here except for
DOM building (and we can always leave them out of a DOM).
The conventional comments in HyTime are not required, and personally,
I believe that they should not have been there in the first place.
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS
----------------------
Another lexical feature that I am not discussing here is CDATA
sections; I assume that, when the parser is reporting character data,
it does not matter how the parser obtained those characters (in a
CDATA section, or in regular #PCDATA with the delimiters escaped using
references). I am happy, of course, to listen to other opinions on
this subject.
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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