Re: XML Blueberry

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

David Brownell wrote:

>>This is a proposal for a new BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBLE version of XML.
> Doesn't sound desirable, at least to me.


I am not sure what "backwards incompatible" is supposed to mean
in this context.  Old parsers won't be able to read Blueberry
documents, that's true.  But nobody needs to write a Blueberry
document unless they wish to exploit Blueberry features.  And
upgrading parsers to Blueberry is intentionally trivial: it's basically
about expanding a few tables.

 
> I'd be interested in seeing _public_ discussion about whether such
> changes are really necessary to handle Unicode 3.1, given that (as
> Rusty pointed out) the basic issue seems to be just wanting to permit
> more characters in XML names.


That is the desired *change*.  The *issue* is that some real human
beings, not those with the most commercial clout, didn't get their
scripts encoded in Unicode 2.0.  They therefore have to use markup tags
encoded in an alien alphabet (typically Latin), though the content can
be native.

> This is what's know as a "slippery slope".  I don't like to think of
> the web initiating a planned obsolescence strategy for basic tools.


XML 1.0 documents will never become obsolete.
XML Blueberry parsers will (as a matter of QOI) handle 1.0 documents
also.

Do you still worry about 2.x browsers when designing Web sites?
No?  Then those "basic tools" are obsolete.

> I _almost_ have sympathy for IBM (and their mainframe customers)
> here ... but OS-specific line-ends are sooo last-century.


If CR-by-itself wasn't a legal XML 1.0 line end, and Macintosh

users were screaming that XML discriminated against their plain
text tools, would you have the same almost-sympathy for them?

And if OS-specific line ends are bad, let's see how long it takes
for everybody to convert to the exclusive use of U+2028.

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein