xml-dev - Re: Common XML (was Re: Document Feature Requirements)

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

David Hunter <david.hunter@mobileQ.COM> writes:

> I've seen people mentioning (perhaps not explicitly) that when you
> put a PI into a document, it may not make it through round-tripping,
> and only certain applications would know how to handle it; but
> that's the POINT.

That's not true -- the XML 1.0 REC explicitly requires XML processors
to report PIs to applications (by contrast, it doesn't explicitly
require them to report elements!).  The last time I looked, PIs were
are required part of the XML Infoset and were part of Canonical XML.
XPath (and thus, XSL), the DOM, and SAX have all supported PIs in the
core from day one.  All in all, I would guess that a PI's chances of
surviving round-tripping are excellent.

The main argument against PIs has to do with legacy HTML browsers,
which get much befuddled when they find <? in their input streams; as
a result, PIs (and the XML declaration) are much frowned upon in XHTML 
circles.

> Along the same lines, people have worried that round-tripping
> documents might lose comments, but again, that's fine.

Agreed.  Comments are an optional part of the Infoset, and in general, 
people cannot reasonably expect their contents to be available to
downstream applications.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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