Re: [xml-dev] [OT] Re: [xml-dev] Lessons learned from the XML experiment

[David Sheets <kosmo.zb@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/13 12:01 PM, David Sheets wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 11/15/13 11:45 AM, David Sheets wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Please direct me to the relevant source that refutes that XML was
>>>> "designed for nodes".
>>>
>>>
>>> <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210>
>>>
>>> One mention of 'node', in a non-normative appendix using other people's
>>> terminology.  That hasn't changed in more recent versions or in XML 1.1.
>>
>>
>> Ah, I understand the difficulty. I believe I should have said
>> "elements". I was thinking in terms of generic trees and picked the
>> word "node" instead. Are "nodes" substantially different from
>> "elements" in this context?
>
>
> ----------------------------------
> The terms "information set" and "information item" are similar in meaning to
> the generic terms "tree" and "node", as they are used in computing. However,
> the former terms are used in this specification to reduce possible confusion
> with other specific data models. Information items do not map one-to-one
> with the nodes of the DOM or the "tree" and "nodes" of the XPath data model.
> ----------------------------------
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/>
>
>
>
>>> There may have been people thinking of nodes, but "designed for nodes" is
>>> ridiculous.
>>
>>
>> Is "designed for elements" ridiculous?
>
>
> Less ridiculous, but still not a clean mapping to the programming concepts
> you were pushing earlier.

Can I be caught by the absence of an element not mapping correctly to
a null value of a optional element? Is there some reason which I'm
missing to encode the null value in a text node as a special value?

Is there something fundamentally wrong with the design of XML that
prevents this kind of data modeling? Is there a trade-off?

Thanks,

David

> --
> Simon St.Laurent
> http://simonstl.com/
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS
> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize
> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting.
>
> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/
> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org
> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org
> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php