[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Well, we are on the same side of the fence. SML-DEV removed attributes with
Minimal-XML (aka SML) and an splinter group of SML-DEV went on in pursuit of
YML with structured attributes. Unfortunately, W3C is an old school bus,
without reverse gear nor breaks, hurling down the road. We flapped our
wings but bus went whizzing by. I am sure the bus driver will tell us
someday what lies at the end of that road just as he has done with URI...
Best,
Don Park
Docuverse
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Clark [mailto:jjc@jclark.com]
...
> I think Erik's right that attributes in XML are a mess. Either
>
> - they ought to have be able to structured values, just like elements
(i.e.
> one could view the content of an element as a special unnamed attribute),
> or
>
> - they should be removed entirely.
>
> Then there's
>
> - the whole mess of attribute value normalization
>
> - the whole mess with namespace declarations that look like attributes but
> aren't really attributes (which apart from confusion implies the parser
> has
> to see the whole start-tag before it can report the element name or any
> qualified attribute names)
>
> The non-uniformity between elements and attributes has a huge cost. It
> doesn't just add extra complexity to parsers, but it adds complexity to
> almost everything built on top of XML (XSLT, schema, DOM, ...).
>
> Whether there's any hope of ever fixing this is a separate issue.
>
> James
|
