Rebelling parser writers (Was: ]]> within a CDATA marked section ?)

[Paul Prescod]

Jarle Stabell wrote:
> 
> [JS]  I'm actually surprised that I haven't heard much rebelling here. :-)
> I think there are lots of *non-trivial* things parser writers 
> must manage in XML, so I don't think they care much about trivial 
> things if they actually are useful to many users.

That's not the feedback we are getting from other implementors. They
have complained about things like allowing two kinds of quotes for
attribute values, having CDATA marked sections, having to check the well
formedness of element declarations and so forth.
 
> My current "favourite XML annoyance" is the rules for entity expansion, which makes writing the name AT&T in an entity rocket science for the average XML user, and probably gives some implementors gray hairs.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Doesn't this work:

<!ENTITY AT-T "AT&amp;T">

Where's the rocket science?

> After attempting to process a document containing errors, I want to present to the user a list of error messages, and when the user clicks on one of these messages, I want to highlight the exact part of the document where the error occurs.

I would suggest you look at the implementation of SP which handles all
of these by keeping information about the storage position (filename,
line number, etc.) of each entity.

 Paul Prescod



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