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Mike Champion wrote:
> In other words, it's not going to happen, so what's the point of wishing
> it would?
Arguably it's expensive to stack up XML systems without a clean
seperation between syntax and content models. And people do get
confused between with two - just this sort of mixup help mess up RDF
adoption for years (and even today, people don't or won't
acknowldege the difference between an RDF graph and RDF/XML).
> I wish people would just acknowledge that the XML syntax and
> Infoset(s) were joined at birth (every well-formed XML document can be
> parsed into a tree).
And not all well formed XML document have an XML Infoset.
> Then maybe we could do what has to be done to make
> the actual Infoset spec more useful (e.g., by making the language less
> awkward, such as "element" rather than "element information item"
> [gag]), and making it as formally rigorous as the syntax spec (somebody
> said that this could be done with ASN.1, but I don't know that). My
> wish sounds about as futile as Bill's wish for pristine waters, I fear.
Pristine waters I can live without, but poor engineering is a
different matter :) A realpolitik approach to XML technology is
fine, then it's down to cost/benefit.
I do think you can build an abstract content model for XML and get
it to interop (layering on SAX might be a quick win). the XML
Infoset would need to be revised to include non-namespaced XML as
'meaningful' (for starters).
One technology where people don't seem to get confused between
models and syntax is UML (a few tools vendors and software
archietcts excepted); maybe that's becuase it's pictorial.
Bill de hÓra
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