attribute order (RE: Syntax Sugar and XML information models)

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

At 09:04 AM 3/29/01 -0500, Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote:
>As for the order of attributes, doesn't XML 1.0 specifically declare this 
>to be
>insignificant?

I've taken that on faith for a while, though I'm wondering more and more 
about how wise that decision really was.  It's not in Tim Bray's 
annotations - it only explicitly appears in the second edition:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-starttags  (para after prod 41)

On some level, I also wonder whether prohibiting duplicate attribute names 
with a well-formedness constraint makes sense, though I'm less inclined to 
push that one.  If order was available, duplication might not create such 
problems, for instance.  Defaults (themselves perhaps a bad idea) also get 
tricky here.


Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books