xml-dev - Canonical Encoding for XML Elements

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

Chris Smith writes:

 > In particular, do parsers keep CDATA sections distinct from
 > character data?

CDATA sections are part of the document's physical representation
rather than of its logical structure, so they would likely be reported
only by a specialised parser designed for authoring tools or
repositories.  For other purposes, it doesn't matter; the following
two are exactly equivalent:

 <example><![CDATA[
  <sample>text</sample>
 ]]></example>

 <example>
  &lt;sample>text&lt;/sample>
 </example>

Switching between the two should produce exactly the same rendered
output from a formatting engine, exactly the same entries in a
database, etc. etc.  SAX would report both as

  start element: example
  characters: "<sample>text</sample>"
  end element: example

(some might break the second event into several smaller ones).


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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