parser for xml-data?

Tim Bray tbray at textuality.com
Sun May 24 13:31:29 BST 1998


At 08:09 PM 5/23/98 -0700, Charles Frankston wrote:
>> Note that the XML declaration has a required order of pseudo-attribute
>> occurrence. It would be best if the XML-family of language were
>> consistent.
>> 
>> [23]  XMLDecl ::=  '<?xml' VersionInfo EncodingDecl? SDDecl? S? '?>' 
>>  
>
>Yes, this is a good point about the XML Decl.  Does Tim Bray care to comment
>here?

Yes.  At the moment, the XML declaration has a required order in which
the bits must appear.  However, the namespace declaration, which looks
(on the face of it) remarkably similar, does not.  Yes, I find this 
irritating. My vote was for the namespace declarations to be strictly 
ordered for consistency with the XML declaration, but I lost.  My 
opinion is that 

1. Because the XML spec BNF doesn't have the &-connector, it's hard and
   inelegant to specify required-but-unordered; so I didn't bother for 
   the XML declaration, and neither Michael nor anyone else caught me
   on this.
2. My WG colleagues *did* catch this in the namespace declaration, and
   were more irritated by the strict ordering than by the inconsistency;
   this leads to the current situation.

 -Tim


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