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

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

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> wrote:
> On 16.11.2013 13:15, David Sheets wrote:
>> statement was overbroad. I am happy making (and defending) the claim
>> "XML was designed for elements".
>
> I'm so sorry for joining party that late :-)
>
> Of course today it is shared understanding that XML document is tree
> composed from elements, attributes and text content of elements. However
> this is in no way expressed in XML specification, it talks about syntax
> of XML, there is nothing about data model which can be constructed from
> the syntax.

In this document <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210>, the
grammar of the XML syntax is described. This grammar is heavily
reliant on elements (called "elements") to represent markup in
syntactic constructions. At the lowest level, we can take this grammar
as a data model *of the stream of bytes*.

> So I think that your defense is lost in advance if we consider XML
> purely as defined in XML Recommendation.

Can XML's grammar ignore the concept of 'element'?

David

>                                 Jirka
>
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