Hi everybody,
Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Florian,
>
> Florian Reuter wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> the problem here is that we need to be able to encode documents like
>>
>> <p><span/><field-start/><span/><p>
>> <p><span/><field-end/></p>
>>
>>
> Did you mean:
>
> <p><span/><field-start/><span/></p>
> <p><span/><field-end/></p>
>
>
> Ah, are both <field-start> and <field-end> empty elements?
>
> To put it another way: What is the content that is being surrounded by
> the <field-*> tags?
>
The problem of marking an area that is not relative to the XML structure
can be solved in different ways, I see two simple approaches:
1) As Florian suggested, using an empty start and end tag as marker:
Florian's approach (a little more complicated example, by adding a
further span)
<p><span/><field-start/><span/></p>
<p><span/><field-end/><span/></p>
Pro - The size:
Only two XML elements for marking the area
Con - The new complexity for XML based applications:
From the view of a XML element it is very hard to find out if part of a
certain field/area or a field/area at all
2) By a 'concatenation' of elements using the same attribute:
Let's call it the XML friendly approach:
<p><span/><span meta:class="foo"/></p>
<p><span meta:class="foo"><span/></p>
Pro - Easy to handle for XML based applications:
e.g. XSLT uses xsl:key
Con - The Size:
Often more than two XML attributes for marking an area
Weighting the pro/con I see currently no reason to use the first
approach and neglect the second, have I overseen something?
Best regards,
Svante
