xml-dev - RE: A processing instruction for robots

["Don Park" <donpark@docuverse.com>]

>Adding the robots info to every DTD in the world requires
>unanimous agreement. Adding a PI requires non-interference
>with other PIs, a vastly simpler task. Waiting for XML
>to support mixin vocabularies and for those to be widely
>used, could take a few years. So the element-based approach
>just doesn't fit my definition of "ideal". That was the
>approach I originally thought about, but there were just
>too many obstacles for it to succeed.

It is the 'interference' notion that I am against because
it causes loss of extensibility.  This notion creates an
imbalance between document creator and subsequent document
processors because any change to the document would have
to use arcane XML features like PI to avoid 'interfering'
with the original document.

Perhaps a more general placeholder standard for tags such
as your indexing tag/PI is what we need.  For example:

<meta:info xmlns:meta="http://www.xml.org/metainfo">
</meta:info>

In the DTD, meta:header content is declared to be ANY so
that any meta-info tags such as your index tag can be
dropped in.

Such a general proposal would have far better chance of
being adopted than a more specific proposal.  Once it is
adopted, everyone can use it to drop in tags for their
own purpose.

Best,

Don Park    -   mailto:donpark@docuverse.com
Docuverse   -   http://www.docuverse.com


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