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

["Christopher R. Maden" <crism@maden.org>]

At 05:26 30-03-2001, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>Is there some kind of processing advantage for _parsers_ (not applications)
>to report attribute values in any sequence other than their original sequence?

Not that I can think of.  But consider the presence of a DTD: what *is* the 
original order?

<!DOCTYPE sample [
<!ELEMENT sample EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST sample
           att1 CDATA "blort"
           att2 CDATA #IMPLIED
           att3 CDATA #REQUIRED>
]>
<sample att3="wibble"/>

What is the order of attributes?  Very good cases can be made for either 
3,1 or 1,3.

Now consider the case of a well-formed document with some attribute 
defaults declared, but other attributes just given in the instance.  What's 
the order there?

-Chris
-- 
Christopher R. Maden, XML Consultant
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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