Re: XML Blueberry

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

David Brownell wrote:


> Crimson augments some version of Unicode rules (java.lang.Character, as
> specified in the Java language spec) with special cases as identified in the
> XML 1.0 spec ... so if Java changes its level of Unicode conformance, that
> parser's behavior will.    It was conformant to Appendix B a while back.
> 
> AElfred2 uses java.lang.Character directly, and doesn't try to add all the
> funky special cases.  That suits its original "mostly correct, but simple"
> goals, but leads to mild nonconformance (nobody's complained!) for
> Appendix B rules about what can be name/namestart characters.
> 
> I don't know what Xerces does, but when I first looked it the character
> processing was incomprehensible, also nonconformant.  I understand
> that the current versions are merely incomprehensible ... :)


In short, parsers often don't get name conformance right, and changing
the rules will not affect them much: broken remains broken.

> p.s. Here's a radical thought.  Rather than death by a thousand cuts,
>     why not just come out with a DTD-less XML?  One big change,
>     not lots of small ones -- easier to manage such changes.


If you want SML, you know where to find it.

-- 
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