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elharo@metalab.unc.edu (Elliotte Rusty Harold) writes:
>At 8:43 PM +0000 2/6/03, Dave Pawson wrote:
>>The design goals for XML are
>> * XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.
>> * XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
>> * XML shall be compatible with SGML.
>> * It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
>> * The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the
>>absolute minimum, ideally zero.
>> * XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.
>> * The XML design should be prepared quickly.
>> * The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
>> * XML documents shall be easy to create.
>> * Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.
>>
>>Which ones are wrong today?
>
>I don't think any of them are wrong today, but 4 and 5 were not fully
>satisfied by the spec that was produced.
4 largely depends on your definition of "easy". 5 is where things
rapidly get aggravating. A lot of the chaos on point five crept in late
in the process, with standalone and the non-validating parsers can
ignore external subset business.
>>What's missing?
>
>A clear description of the information from the document that a
>processor must pass to the client application. Processor behavior was
>severely underspecified in XML 1.0. What was specified was almost by
>accident.
It certainly would have been nice to have that listed coherently in one
place, yes.
I have to admit that XML 1.0, flaws and all, makes me feel all warm and
fuzzy compared to the specifications that have followed. It wasn't
perfect, but I suspect it's by far the least dysfunctional of the XML
family of specs.
--
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
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