Re: Ordering of XML elements

[Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@earthlink.net>]

6/7/01 11:28:14 AM, Bill Van Valkenburgh <billv@firstlogic.com> wrote:

>I have an application under development where input is in the form of XML
>documents. I have some fields which ordering is important. For example:
>
><input-fields>
>   <param> "a" </param>
>   <param> "b" </param>
>   <param> "c" </param>
></input-fields>
>
>My customers will be using whatever XML editor they desire to generate files
>like this. The order of the param elements is significant. So my question
>is: can I depend on an XML editor to write out the param elements in the
>order shown in the customer's XML editor? Does the XML specification say
>that the order of elements with equivalent names is significant?

Yes, order is significant, although that fact has to be inferred indirectly from the spec and its 
references to SGML.  If order weren't significant, "narrative" document types like XHTML wouldn't be 
possible.