[SML] Whether to support Attribute or not?

[Colas Nahaboo]

"Clark C. Evans" writes:
> Take the following HTML fragment:

>   <table border="2" cellpadding="50">
>     <tr><td>One</td><td>Two</td></tr>
>     <tr><td colspan="2">Three</td></tr>
>   </element>

> I clearly see the different role that content plays
> as opposed to attributes. The border and cellpadding
> attributes *modify* the state of the table; where
> the tr element content is *part-of* the table.

mmm, if you really look at it, things are mudded because you forget that
<table> is an object having a field "rows", which is  a list of elements of
"type" <tr>, and that <tr> is an object having a field named "cells" having a
list of <td>s as values.

Now, replace the word "field" by "attributes" and you see that contents is
actually a kind of attribute, with its real name omitted and implicit
(actually, explicited somewhat in the DTD.

Everything is confused in XML because everything is of type "text", that you
mix n match everywhere.

For me, your exemple *should* be written in an ideal XML 2:

<table border="2" cellpadding="50"
  rows=	 <tr cells=<td contents="One"/><td contents="Two"/>/>
         <tr cells=<td colspan="2"contents="Three"/>/>
/>

--
Colas Nahaboo, Koala/Dyade/Bull @ INRIA Sophia, http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas


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