Re: [xml-dev] Character Entities: An XML Core WG View

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 5:48 PM -0500 11/1/02, Mike Champion wrote:

>It would seem to me that ALL the "syntax sugar preprocessing" --
>entity resolution and substitution, CDATA section processing, attribute
>default value insertion, maybe XInclude resolution -- belongs
>in some preprocessor step.

XInclude resolution is different because it's not syntax sugar. Most 
importantly it's based on elements and the infoset rather than low 
level syntax. You need to parse the document to produce the infoset 
before you can resolve the XIncludes.

Beyond that the problem for a preprocessor step is that what's legal 
to be preprocessed depends on where it shows up. For instance 
<name>R&#x61;ndy;</name> is well-formed whereas 
<n&#x61;me>Randy;</n&#x61;me> is not. I think you'd pretty much need 
a full-fledged parser in the preprocessor.
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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