xml-dev - RE: Why the Infoset?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 03:29 PM 8/2/00 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>""Groves are the greatest thing I've
> never seen or completely understood."
>
>with the possible exception of Architectural Forms."

That doesn't imply not invented here - it merely implied never seen in use. 

>The work invested in groves by others 
>seems to indicate they may be appropriate 
>for defining subsets.  That is what grove plans 
>are designed for with respect to markup 
>technology.  What is different in this instance?  John 
>Cowan has already made a good stab at showing 
>the difficulty of creating an exhaustive 
>definition.  He has also stated that a grove 
>plan would be welcomed as a non-normative 
>appendix.  That is a progress via one path. 
>What are the alternatives and how are they 
>superior to the one that the editor of the 
>specification in question says is acceptable?

The alternative, which you seem bent on ignoring, is expanding the list of
information items to include more of XML's features.  I could probably live
with getting back items 1, 2, and 8 from the list in Appendix C:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset#omitted

4, 9, and 10 are also intriguing, and there may be those who'd like the
entire list back.  Some general discussion of which whitespace is
considered significant might also be worthwhile.

No groves, but not exactly a revolution either.  It'd be a change to those
who consider DTDs throwaways, mysteriously burned away during parsing, but
that's about it.



Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books