xml-dev - Re: SAX: Comments (question 7 of 10)

[James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>]

David Megginson wrote:

> Should SAX include an event for comments?
> 
>   public void comment (char ch[], int length);

No.

This is appropriate only for editor type applications, which also
typically need to be able to preserve entity structure.  Unless SAX
also  provides enough information to support preservation of the entity
structure, it shouldn't provide information about comments. Providing
adequate information about the entity structure would prevent SAX from
being simple.  A startEntity and endEntity event is far from adequate
for this: consider internal entity references in attribute values for
example.

> PRO
> ---
> 
> - the DOM includes comments in the core level-one implementation;

My understanding is that the DOM is also going to provide full
information about the entity structure to support editor type
applications.

> - HyTime uses comments for lexical constraints.

I don't think HyTime 2 puts information intended for machine processing
in comments any longer.  Anyway these comments were inside markup
declarations, and so would not be allowed in XML.

James



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