Re: [xml-dev] Failed XML standards

[Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Elliotte Rusty Harold
<elharo@ibiblio.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Peter Hunsberger
> <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So what's the alternative?  There are lots of things that people
>> sometimes want to do, but not always.  Having optional standards that
>> cover these areas is probably a good thing;
>
> No, the alternative is to build them into the specs and require
> parsers to support them, but not require documents to use them. For
> example, consider attributes. You don't have to use them in XML, but
> if you do use them you know they're supported. xml:id, xml:base, and a
> few other things (though probably not XInclude) should be baked in,
> not bolted on. Watch this space. :-)
>

Well that sure doesn't jive with your original starting position:

> Let me put it like this: one of the original goals of XML was "The number of
> optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally
> zero."

However, optional but part of the base spec, vs. optional and part of
a different spec really makes no difference as far as I can tell,
other than to make the base spec larger and harder to get agreement
on?

-- 
Peter Hunsberger