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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Rafter" <lists@jeffrafter.com>
To: "cr88192" <cr88192@hotmail.com>
Cc: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 4:08 AM
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Simplify XML Now? (Was RE: [xml-dev] Re: Hostility to
"binary XML" (was Re: [xml-dev] XML 2004 weblog items?))
>> I think someone else suggested using '%'.
>
> I believe this was Jimmy Cerra on Danny Ayers blog comments... just a
> guess though:
>
> http://dannyayers.com/archives/2004/11/05/exorcising-qnames/
>
ok.
>> imo I would be ok with '%' and not actally changing things at the parser
>> level (processing of them would still be left to layers above the
>> parser). I will draw an analogy, eg, with c's printf syntax. printf's
>> syntax isn't part of the core language, but at the same time makes things
>> more flexible. people, however, realize in many cases to be careful with
>> '%', as probably those dealing with a modified syntax would.
>> probably %% could be used as an escaped form of %.
>
> This feels like a very dangerous idea-- of course this is probably just
> because I just got done implementing changes in AElfred for everything
> entities. if anything in XML is going to be escaped there are existing
> mechanisms to do this:
>
> % &percent; &perc; etc...
>
however, these were syntax level. I was thinking of an above-syntax
mechanism, but oh well.
> Secondly, there are probably hundreds of thousands of documents (probably
> more) that utilize % in content already because it was specifically
> allowed and carried no importance in content. The hours upon hours to make
> such a backward incompatible change would render it unusable.
>
ok, makes sense.
I guess the current syntax of prefix:name would work, even if a little
non-obvious. it can be assumed that, otherwise, that syntax is unlinkely
(except maybe in the case of a uri).
> I think that this problem can only be solved in one of two ways... (a)
> eliminating namespaces altogether or (b) add a new layer. Though many of
> us would like to eliminate namespaces, many wouldn't-- and the backward
> compatibility issue will hurt us for a long time... adding a new layer is
> disagreeable as well, but plausible. Something along the lines of the XML
> Schema key-keyref mechanism (which I tend to avoid) is a step in the right
> direction-- but there is probably a more elegant solution similar to
> xml:id. I am not sure what that is though... just a hunch.
>
I was voting for adding a new layer myself. the '%' syntax, in itself, would
hold no syntactic relevance except in contexts where it is expected as such.
of course, this would interfere with purely parser-level processing as the
parser might not have that kind of context.
also possible I guess would be to have the &:prefix:name; syntax, but have
it escape itself somehow and be passed to another layer. in this way, where
it is handled doesn't really matter, and apps can handle it in the parser if
they so please.
I don't know.
I like namespaces myself.
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