Re: [xml-dev] RE: Just nodes please

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>]

* Michael Kay wrote:
>On 06/12/2010 16:34, David Lee wrote:
>> Nothing stopping your application from allowing  that equivalence [between attributes and child elements].
>
>Yes, but it's an interesting idea that the parser should treat them as 
>equivalent, simplifying the API and allowing an effortless move from 
>attributes to child elements when the data gets more complex. Anything 
>we can do to simplify the API (and thus the mapping to data structures 
>supported by programming languages) is a move in the right direction.

Attributes are the simplification of the API, their order does not
matter, you can only have one of a kind, it can only have a simple
string as value (if you ignore issues involving entities), all un-
like elements. Most places, like streaming processors, you even get
them all at once (in part out of necessity due to namespaces), and
can access them efficiently. Again, all unlike elements.
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