Re: [xml-dev] Ten Years Later - XML 1.0 Fifth Edition?

[Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

For the record, I would support an XML 2.0 that addressed these issues, 
provided it offered enough benefits to outweigh its costs. The problem 
with XML 1.1 and XML 1.0.5 are that they benefit *no one* and impose 
huge costs on everyone. (I still have yet to meet one single actual user 
who needs XML 1.1.)

I would suggest a putative XML 2.0 follow roughly Tim Bray's skunkworks 
proposals. Specifically I'd like to see:

1. Combine the namespaces, XML base, and xml:id specs with XML 1.0. 
(Possibly XInclude, though I'm not sure about that one.)
2. Remove the internal DTD subset. Allow the DOCTYPE declaration to 
point at schemas of various types and move all discussion of validity to 
separate documents for different schema languages.
3. Expand the list of predefined entity references to include what's 
defined in HTML and MathML.
4. Expand the name productions to include characters from Unicode 5, but 
still forbid undefined characters, musical symbols and the like. That 
is, follow the patterns of XML 1.0 rather than 1.1.
5. Ban the C0 and C1 control characters, except \r, \n, and \t.
6. Eliminate CDATA sections
7. Eliminate one of the quotes, either single or double, around 
attribute values.
8. Remove attribute value normalization and all attribute types (at 
least in the base spec)

I'd be willing to compromise on a lot of this, by the way. I can live 
ith CDATA sections and single quoted attribute values, even if they make 
life tougher for parser writers.

That would be a simplified XML worth supporting. However what XML 1.1 
gave us and XML 1.0.5 is now proposing is of no value to anyone, and 
imposes massive costs on everyone. It is a simply bad idea and a bad 
proposal, even irrespective of the abuse of the errata process.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/