RE: [xml-dev] Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: [xml-dev] XML 2004 weblog items?)

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liam Quin [mailto:liam@w3.org] 
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 5:19 PM
> To: Dare Obasanjo
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: 
> [xml-dev] XML 2004 weblog items?)
> 
> > 
> > "One can do validation in the writer and then plausibly 
> skip the sort 
> > of checks you mention in a reader, and still be talking about XML, 
> > even with today's textual interchange formats."
> 
> I was replying to Derick Denny-Brown, who mentioned specifically
> > Duplicate attribute detection,
> > character checking, namespace resolution/checking.
> 
> (although I'm not sure what he m eans by namespace 
> resolution, since one isn't supposed to have to dereference 
> the namespace URI)

I'm sure he means mapping namespace URIs to prefixes including the
associated scoping rules and the like. 

> > Sounds like you are claiming that XML parsers (e.g. the 
> stuff that XML 
> > web service end points or RSS aggregators use to consume XML coming 
> > from arbitrary and sometimes malicious sources) should skip 
> > well-formedness & validity tests since they can trust the writers.
> 
> That's not what I meant to claim -- you quoted me out of context.

So detecting duplicate attributes and checking if characters are legal
isn't well-formedness checking? I'm confused, how are you quoted out of
context? 

1. Derek points out at that some well-formedness checking is expensive
2. Liam responds that parsers can skip them and trust the generator of
the XML
3. I point out that this is problematic on the Web where consumers of
XML usually cannot trust producers of XML 

--
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are ingenious.


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