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At 11:22 AM -0500 11/8/03, Bob Wyman wrote:
> Frankly, I'm a bit surprised by all the heat that has been
>generated by what I thought was a very simple proposal. Clearly there
>is something I'm not understanding... Please bear with me as I try to
>be more explicit about what I'm suggesting. Then, *PLEASE* let me know
>what it is that I'm not understanding...
It is not at all simple. What you are proposing is a bullet aimed at
the heart of XML. There is no binary data in XML. None. Zip. Zero.
Zilch. Nada. There is no data except text.
You are proposing to add binary data to the core of XML. When you
tell me that you want to pass 32-bit integers as pure binary, then
you are saying that 7, 07, +07, 0007, and so forth are the same
thing. They are not. The data model on which your SAD SAX API is
based makes assumptions about XML that are not true for many people.
You are restricting XML to one data model, and claiming other data
models are irrelevant.
All data in an XML document is text, never anything else. How that
text is instantiated into locally useful data structures is a local
decision. It is certainly not something you'd want to exchange on the
Internet, and it is is absolutely not something that should be baked
into the core APIs.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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