Re: [xml-dev] nextml

[Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com>]

On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 16:52:19 -0000, Pete Cordell wrote:
> Thanks Amy.
> 
> Key among the other good stuff you mention, is:
> 
>> I'll also
>> reiterate that I'd like to see something that could be algorithmically
>> mapped to XML 1.0 + Namespaces without loss; I think that defining that
>> sort of specification is achievable in a reasonable time, and the tools
>> required could be distributed separately, without requiring a wholesale
>> upgrade of existing toolchains
> 
> I think that's really important.  Ideally it would be nice to take 
> any XML 1.0 document, convert it to XML??? and then independently 

Okay, now *that* part might not be possible.  For instance, suppose 
that nextml doesn't permit a doctype decl--no external subset, no 
internal subset, nit.  You could easily map nextml to xml 1.0, but not 
vice versa (part of the reason for doing this would be to deliberately 
disable the ability to use notations and parameter entities and 
specifying dtd attribute types in an internal subset--there are some 
ways to recover from some of that, but not all of them).  You can do 
this with the namespace stuff, in theory.  It would be possible to deal 
with nested comments in both directions.

I'm thinking on the order of: <?nextml features="qualified-names 
abbreviated-names nested-comments" ?> where the 'features' 
pseudo-attribute would contain a list of well-defined changes which are 
relevant to this document.  This would have the advantage that folks 
could adopt a "profile" without the struggle of defining one, by 
choosing the features that they want.  Each feature could correspond to 
a mode in a master stylesheet for transformation.  Something like that, 
anyway.

Amy!
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
You like the taste of danger, it shines like sugar on your lips,
and you like to stand in the line of fire
just to show you can shoot straight from your hip.
There must be a 1000 things you would die for; 
I can hardly think of two.
		-- Emily Saliers