Re: [xml-dev] "Introducing MicroXML, Part 1: Explore the basicprinciples

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Peter Flynn scripsit:

> "Whitespace in attributes is not normalized in MicroXML as it is in
> XML."
>
> While I don't see this as a particular problem (at least for my own
> work), I'm curious as to why this approach was chosen. It certainly
> fits the principle of least interference...was there some idea that
> web designers might want to embed rather more in an attribute than
> most of us would expect?

Since there is no DTD, the only normalization you would get is changing
line endings inside attribute values to spaces.  This was primarily
to allow an attribute with space-separated values to be divided across
multiple lines, back in the day of 80-column maximum lines.

Quoth Tim Bray here on xml-dev in 2003:

"We screwed up in letting attribute normalization into XML.  It still
boggles my mind in retrospect that during the discussions back in 96-97,
nobody piped up to say 'why are you morons doing this?'  Because we
probably would have said 'D'oh, right, lose it.'  Sigh."  said it should
have been removed from XML in the first place.

Quoth James Clark in his blog:

"I think this has to go.  HTML5 does not do attribute value
normalization. This means that it is theoretically possible for a
MicroXML document to be interpreted slightly differently by an XML
processor than by a MicroXML processor.  However, I think this is
unlikely to be a problem in practice.  Do people really put newlines in
attribute values and rely on their being turned into spaces?  I doubt it."
it from MicroXML.

-- 
There is / One art                      John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
No more / No less                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
To do / All things
With art- / Lessness                     --Piet Hein