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On Fri, 2001-12-07 at 16:44, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
> On the other hand, I'll suggest that tools which need to modify XML
> documents (XML editors) will often want to make the smallest possible
> change to a document so humans won't be surprised when unrelated parts
> of the document change in what is essentially a superficial way. A
> user who regularly edits documents using simple text editors will
> often arrange attributes for readability, and will be frustrated when
> a tool changes things around.
> The distinction between applications that need to care and those
> that don't can probably be described as the difference between
> applications for which XML *contains* the data and those for which XML
> *is* the data. For the former, XML syntax is simply the box that
> contains application-specific information. For the latter, the XML
> itself is what the application is concerned with.
It's funny to me how the Infoset view of XML documents completely blows
off any notion of "smallest possible change". In my own development,
I'm moving toward an interface which will support the Infoset
expectation of unordered, but still preserve the original order.
Namespace declarations have similar issues, and a "smallest possible
change" strategy with those can be a real challenge. Hopefully I'll
have that one sorted out by next week.
--
Simon St.Laurent
"Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue
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