When to use attributes vs. elements

[Andrew Layman]

Thank you.  Dan asks a reasonable question, which is whether a document that
uses the conventions described in
http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/microsoft-serializing.html needs to
signal somehow that these conventions are in play.

In case of the "canonical format" I proposed, however, I don't think special
signalling is necessary: The proposal does not add any new interpretations
to the use of elements or attributes beyond what can be described in a DTD
or a schema such as XML-Data or DCD.  Elements, attributes, ids and idrefs
are carefully used so that their normal XML interpretation matches the
scoping and linking rules of object graphs or relational databases.

In a general case, if conventions add rules for interpretation above what is
in the structure of a document or above what can be expressed in a DTD, then
this would need to be somehow signalled in order for a reader to process the
document.  

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)