Re: [xml-dev] 2SimpleXML

[Liam Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 11:49:36AM -0800, Redefined Horizons wrote:
> [1] Do I need to specify that documents in 2SimpleXML should be in a
> standard character set, as they did for MinimalXML? If so which
> charcter set should I use? I'm guessing it would be Unicode of one
> sort or another...

UTF8 and UTF16 are a good start.

> [2] I would like to provide a way to escape the "<" and ">" characters
> in the content of a 2SimpleXML element. I was thinking I would just
> use the "\" character as my escape character. In this case the
> following would be possible:
> 
> <sample> The "test" element in this line would not be recognized by a
> 2SimpleXML parser. /<test\>Testing\<\/test/><\sample>

You need to decide whether you mean / or \ for a start.
If you mean / you'll have a lot of problems.  If you
mean \ you get problems with needing to escape \\ e.g.
in Microsoft MS-DOS and Windows file paths.  But the biggest
issue is that your documents will not be well-formed XML.

If you're going to have XML in the name, please make every
"2simpleXML" document also be a well-formed XML document.

Of course, the single biggest benefit of XML is that it's the
same everywhere.  It's not about the feature set, it's about
the fact that every new document, every new application, every
new use adds to the value of everything that has already been done.

Community consensus isn't about technical excellence, although I
know many of us often wish that it were.

So really I'd expect you to introduce a subset -- or an incompatible
superset of a subset -- of XML with a statement about why you're
doing it... but maybe xml-dev isn't the best place to sell such
a thing, it's hard to know.  I think experiments are to be
encouraged, as long as they're clearly motivated... :-)

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/