xml-dev - Re: Why the Infoset?

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> At 05:41 PM 7/31/00 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote:
> >This is because of all the flak that SGML property sets and groves have
> >taken, so the Infoset is a renamed baby not yet tainted. If you want to
be
> >able to define your own 'pruning' of a complete XML document you want
> >property sets and grove plans (and I'll bet *you* never thought you'd
need
> >these :-)
>
> Thanks for the red herring, Jonathan.  I'm not especially excited about
> groves, despite several efforts at becoming interested, but I don't find
> the Infoset adequate either.  Its philosophy of partial abstraction (at
> least it's not meta-meta-abstraction) just seems plain broke.
>

You correctly complain that the Infoset is only a partial abstraction of
XML.

Suppose this: we define a 100% complete abstract model of an XML 1.0, and
XML Namespace compliant document, and also define a mechanism for defining
subsets of such an abstract model. Sort of the opposite of base class
inheritance where sub classes gain properties, we define a pruning mechanism
to eliminate certain properties from subsets of the base information set. In
this scenario, the current XML Information Set would be derived from the
full fidelity  Base XML Information Set.

For example, I might create a subset which equates either single or double
quotes around attribute values. Or I may wish to view the logical document
model with expanded entities. But we all have a base from which to make
these pruning decisions.

I'd prefer this. No red herring.

Jonathan Borden
http://www.openhealth.org