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I am new to the list, but I have followed the
short tag discussion for about a week now. I am in agreement with those who
believe it is not necessary. To respond to Paul's argument about 'optional' XML
standards, I will quote the W3C's XML recommendation (uh oh!)
"4. It shall be easy to write programs which process XML
documents.
5. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept
to the absolute minimum, ideally zero."
Page 4.
I believe that human readability and ease of use
is more important than saving the few K that short tags could offer (in some
cases more). XML should be as standardized as possible and as readable as
possible. Optional short tags would undermine both of those characteristics
which make XML the future.
My two cents,
Michael Alaly
Paul Prescod
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I think that even more important than this argument is that nobody
is proposing mandatory short end tags. XML with optional short end
tags offers the advantages of languages with uniform, short end markers
but also allows you to "be redundant" where that will help. I've
proposed in the past that full SGML should take optional redundancy farther
to allow something like this: <DIV ID=INTRO>
<DIV ID=WHY> .... </DIV
ID=WHY> </DIV ID=INTRO>
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