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- To: "Emmanuil Batsis (Manos)" <mbatsis@netsmart.gr>,xml-dev <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
- Subject: Re: [xml-dev] malfunctioning, evil adult as XML
- From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 20:50:11 -0500
- In-reply-to: <3E3AF5F4.5050407@netsmart.gr>
- References: <9B9A5456AFE99E4181416B252F63BDA207C4BBDA@red-msg-05.redmond.corp.microsoft.com> <001b01c2c925$0cbe3480$a800a8c0@SeairthA31><3E3A719D.9030508@netsmart.gr> <p04330104ba602536082a@[192.168.254.4]><3E3A8005.5020502@netsmart.gr> <p04330109ba603601fa5e@[192.168.254.4]><3E3AF5F4.5050407@netsmart.gr>
At 12:17 AM +0200 2/1/03, Emmanuil Batsis (Manos) wrote:
>I don't see how XML can get violated by what I suggested. In the
>case you imply where the XML is for consumption by multiple
>entities, there must be some agreement in the form of a schema
>anyway. What I suggest is a flexible model that does not break XML
>1.0 and can be agreed upon. No reason to worry... just expect a
>simple type in the form of either an element or an attribute; but a
>simple type is just that.
A transform from one XML vocabulary to another is fine, as long as
it's clear that's what you're doing. However, the problem is that
this promulgates the idea that attributes are just a funny kind of
child element, and they're not. The structure of the document is not
the same before and after the transformation. They have
characteristics child elements don't have and vice versa. They are
not equivalent. Changing attributes to child elements or vice versa
is not the same thing as changing double quotes to single quotes
around attribute values or adding extra white space inside tags. This
is not just a matter of syntax sugar. Developers who think they are
the same are going to encounter problems, probably sooner rather than
later.
Oh, and one more thing: there does not need to be any agreement about
anything, including the schema. Well-formedness is all that's
required. There are no types. There's just elements. And elements can
have substructure, even when the schema says they can't. Such a
document would schema-invalid, but is still completely legal and can
be usefully processed.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ |
| Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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