Re: [xml-dev] Interoperability [long]

[Eddie Robertsson <eddie@allette.com.au>]

<snip/>

> Every parser I've ever seen supports 8859-1.  Is there a
> single counterexample?  But <snicker> that doesn't help you
> though, because I can always put &#x20ac; (Euro) in my 8859-1
> text.  BTW Sean, how do you do Euros?  SGML had SDATA
> entities, but they had poor interoperability and flaky
> product support.
>
> Here's one area where SGML (kind of) wins.  You could in
> theory limit the charset to 8859-1 in the SGML declaration.
> Mind you, I never heard of anyone ever doing this on a
> production basis... toolset problems?
>
> I guess the modern schema datatypes kind of allow you
> to do this via the regexp tools?

Yes, If I understand the datatype spec correctly you can do either:

<xs:simpleType name="ISO8859_1">
  <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
    <xs:pattern value="\p{BasicLatin}+"/>
    <xs:pattern value="\p{Latin-1Supplement}+"/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

or

<xs:simpleType name="ISO8859_1">
  <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
    <xs:pattern value="[&#0000-&#00FF]+"/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

for one or more characters in ISO8859-1. See [1]

Cheers,
/Eddie

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#regexs

>
>
> >Oh, BTW, Opera and lots of other tools out there that
> >call themselves XML compliant, don't do Unicode. Worse, they
> >silently don't do Unicode. You find these things out
> >the hard way.
>
> Then they're NOT XML TOOLS and this is NOT XML's FAULT.
> BTW, the browsers actually do a pretty good job in my
> experience.  Hey Sean, let's name some names and put
> some pressure on the vendors.
>
> >Call me a fuddy-duddy but simple stuff like this
> >was simpler with the *complex* SGML standard
> >than it is with the *simple* XML standard.
>
> I'll certainly buy into the premise that SGML tools
> tend to be heavily authoring-focused.  One reason is
> that in large part, all that ever happened with SGML
> was you authored it and then you printed it.  The great
> virtue was you could still print it 10 years later...
> try that with MS Office.
>
> >To return to the original spark of this, I believe that a significant
> >part of the problem is that XML's definition is just syntax
> >and compliance with the syntax doesn't tell you a lot
> >when it comes to tying components together into complete
> >systems.
>
> You've pointed useful fingers at some gaps in our tool
> repertoire, particularly in the authoring-support and
> content-management spaces.  It's not obvious to me that
> a focus on structure rather than syntax would really
> be that important in fixing these problems.
>
> And I stand by my claim, based only on my personal
> experience, that in heterogeneous distributed environments,
> it's easier to agree on syntax than on data structures.
> And way more robust.  Clearly there are those who have
> different experiences. -Tim
>
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