RE: [xml-dev] Re: determining ID-ness in XML

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

They were disliked by the original SGML community, sometimes 
for good reasons (abuse that proprietarized data), and 
sometimes silly ones (The SGML Way - Content must be 
separated from presentation or processor local semantics). 
Nonetheless, several systems used them for putting out-of-band 
information in the content, eg, style information, hyperlink 
targets, instructions to downstream processors, and so forth.

They are handy.  Think of them as yet another way of expressing 
a system vocabulary in the content.  The xml: habit like 
the http:// in the namespace habit actually contravene the 
norms of markup more than PIs.  It has become a political 
issue and for that reason, I among others am insisting on 
valid technical requirements.

That said, a system vocabularly (xml:n) has been 
established for the xml subset, so it is likely to 
be extended everytime someone not fond of PIs finds 
yet another processor tweak they want.  We should be 
very careful about accepting these in cases where 
other standard means exist.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcus Carr [mailto:mrc@allette.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 11:36 PM
To: Michael Fuller
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Re: determining ID-ness in XML



Michael Fuller wrote:

> No; but then I never understood why the use of processing instructions
> had become infra dig. W3C politics, I hear whispered. Anyone care to
share?

My totally uninformed guess is because in SGML, every application felt (and
was)
free to use them any way they wanted. They didn't contain information
specified by
the standard, they contained any kind of information that the application
might use.

This doesn't seem to happen with XML applications - if it did, I would be
against
their use as well, as the data produced becomes proprietary. I do think that
they
are appropriate vehicles for well defined information related to the
recommendations.


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein



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