xml-dev - Reporting empty elements

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

Peter Murray-Rust writes:

 > There has been discussion on this and my understanding that the
 > unequivocal policy is that <TAG></TAG> and <TAG/> result in exactly
 > the same events or grove and there is NO way of distinguishing
 > which the original document contained. Some people regret this, but
 > the decision is clear.

One problem is that the PR does not fully define the information set
that an XML parser is required to return to an application (there a
few scattered rules, such as the ignorable-whitespace rule).  I'd
suggest that the difference between <TAG></TAG> and <TAG/> is lexical
rather than structural; an interface like SAX, that operates mainly on
logical structure, should not report the difference; an interface that
preserves lexical features (such as comments, internal entity
references, etc.) might provide access to the original form.


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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