Re: [xml-dev] [ Revised ] 15 elementary truths about XML

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

On 01/11/2011 14:33, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> David Carlisle wrote:
>
>> [XML] Documents consist of characters not bytes
> If an XML processor processes characters, not bytes, then what software takes the bytes in a file and generates characters?
>
> Are you saying that an XML processors builds on top of another piece of software (which converts bytes to characters)?
The layering of the spec is imperfect, but you're probably making it 
worse. Yes, there's an octet-to-character decoding layer and then 
there's a layer that only looks at characters. In an ideal world the 
decoding layer would probably not be part of the parser.
>
> How is a character presented to an XML processor if it is not presented as one or more bytes?
Who cares? That's a private agreement between the two layers. It might 
be a Java object of class Character - which might be stored as one or 
more bytes, but it certainly isn't presented as one or more bytes.
>
> Perhaps I should use the word "file" rather than "document"?
I'm no lover of the use of the word "entity" to refer to this 
abstraction in the XML specifications, but I fail to see any merit in 
trying to find a better term. "File" is far too suggestive of 
named-things-in-operating-system-filestore.

Michael Kay
Saxonica