RE: [xml-dev] Mixed content in data-binding (Was: Re: [xml-dev] Interesting pair of comments

["Andrew Layman" <andrewl@microsoft.com>]

Agreed.  What matters (for versioning) is having a default processing
model that treats the elements with funny names differently.  Right now,
attributes implicitly provide that segregation.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Hunsberger [mailto:peter.hunsberger@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 8:24 AM
To: Andrew Layman
Cc: XML-dev
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Mixed content in data-binding (Was: Re: [xml-dev]
Interesting pair of comments

On 7/15/05, Andrew Layman <andrewl@microsoft.com> wrote:

<snip/>
> 
> But there is also a versioning issue. Since adding such meta-data as
the
> last-modified date after the fact is a typical usage, attributes today
> allow such annotation with less disruption to existing readers.  E.g.
> 
> <email last-modified='2005-02-02'>fred@somewhere.com</email>
> 
> But this only works to one level.  One cannot add an attribute to that
> attribute.
> 
> One could imagine a future version of XML that treated elements and
> attributes with more parallelism, and allowed attributes to have
> structure, perhaps with an element-like syntax, as in:
> 
>
<email>fred@somewhere.com<@last-modified>2005-02-02</@last-modified></em
> ail>
> 
> And
> 
>
<email>fred@somewhere.com<@last-modified>2005-02-02<@says-who>Joe</@says
> -who></@last-modified></email>
> 

Umm, not to be glib, but at that point you just have an element with a
funny name. Semantically, elements can already replace attributes, so
what's the point?

-- 
Peter Hunsberger