Re: [xml-dev] Tradeoffs of XML encoding by enclosing all content in CDAT

["Fraser Goffin" <goffinf@googlemail.com>]

> But I wouldn't do that either. Call it puritanism if you like. I program for
> pleasure, and shipping code with that sort of deficiency just leaves a bad
> taste..

I don't call it puritanical, there's nothing wrong in having
professional pride and always attempting to produce the best thats
possible. I salute you :-). But for most of us its not at 'any cost'.

> ..... You'll never find me asking users to vote on which bugs
> should be fixed either.

Oh come on Michael. Just like in In any large enterprise, my business
colleagues *always* determine which bugs get fixed. They might ask my
opinion, they might consider the consequences of not fixing the one
that I think is the most critical, but at the end of the day they
control the budget and the prioritied list of what is affordfable. If
they accept the business risk that is the decision that will (and
arguably should) prevail.

Fraser.

2008/9/30 Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>:
>> No I (like Rick) am talking about pragmatism. Sometimes it is
>> possible to reason about the likely occurence of edge cases
>> such as ]]>
>
> I'm sometimes prepared to be pragmatic, for example I don't worry too much
> what happens if an input document contains a text node longer than 2G
> characters. But writing code that breaks if a particular 3-character
> sequence is present in the input? Sorry, but you won't find me doing that,
> or willingly using code written by someone else who does that.
>
> It's not as if it's a rare character sequence. It's been present in
> half-a-dozen mail messages that I've received over the last couple of days.
>
> Thanks, Richard, for the reminder that "]]>" is illegal even outside CDATA.
> I knew that of course, but it's the kind of rule you can easily forget
> because it is so totally irrational.
>
> You can survive a long time with a pragmatic approach to coding. I came
> across one schema processor that didn't bother to "undeclare" namespace
> prefixes when they went out of scope, and I bet very few users have ever
> noticed, and those that have are unlikely to suffer seriously as a result.
> But I wouldn't do that either. Call it puritanism if you like. I program for
> pleasure, and shipping code with that sort of deficiency just leaves a bad
> taste. If you go down that road, you don't know when to stop, and you end up
> shipping garbage. You'll never find me asking users to vote on which bugs
> should be fixed either.
>
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/
>
>