xml-dev - SML philosophy WAS Re: basic xml philosophy question(s)

["Laurent Bossavit" <laurent@mmania.com>]

I was sure the following would elicit *some* reaction...

> > Same kind of answer : it depends... Neither is "better" in the 
> > absolute unless you're an advocate of SML; they want to do away with 
> > one of them entirely - you only get one guess which.
> 
> This seems to be a blantant mis-representation of
> the discussions on SML-DEV.   

Maybe a smiley somewhere in there would have been appropriate. The 
above was only intended as a half-serious jab at the SML group; for 
those not aware of it, "SML" is the original name for a subset of XML 
with the goal, among others, of reducing parser overhead, now 
apparently split into "Common XML" 
    http://www.simonstl.com/articles/cxmlspec.txt
and "Minimal XML"
    http://www.docuverse.com/smldev/minxmlspec.html
and debated on the sml-dev mailing list.

Basically the philosophy of the SML group (as I understand it) 
consists of not taking that "XML is just small enough" quote for 
granted, and exploring what might be usefully taken away from XML 
1.0. 

I stand by the (revised) assertion that Minimal XML drops support for 
attributes. IMNSHO that amounts to throwing the baby out with the 
bathwater.

I tend to be more sympathetic with the approach expressed in Common 
XML, though it does away with too much for my tastes; comments are 
way too useful to do without, and if it weren't for the slightly 
awkward syntax I would be partial to CDATA sections as well.

I do think the SML group can eventually make valuable contributions, 
there's definitely stuff in XML 1.0 that can be normalized away, the 
DTD being an obvious candidate now that there are many other 'native' 
ways of describing document structures.


========================================
Laurent Bossavit     -     Ingénieur R&D
>>>        laurent@mmania.com        <<<
>>            ICQ#39281367            <<
MultiMania     http://www.multimania.fr/
========================================

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