A practical question about attributes

[Frank Boumphrey]

Pros:Use attributes when you want to enforce content, and you dont want the
values to appear on the 'print out'.

Cons:you cant use external entiies in attributes, you can't repeat them, and
they have no fixed order.

Use elements when the content is designed to be read.

As far as the DOM is concerned, an element list is indexed and automatically
updated, an attribute list is not.

As far as I can see from reviewing the discussions over the last ten years
(about 50% for and 50% against attributes) the rest is religion!

Frank

Frank Boumphrey

XML and style sheet info at Http://www.hypermedic.com/style/index.htm
Author: - Professional Style Sheets for HTML and XML http://www.wrox.com
CoAuthor:  XML applications from Wrox Press, www.wrox.com
Author: Using XML on the Web (March)
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeffrey E. Sussna <jes at kuantech.com>
To: 'XML-DEV' <xml-dev at ic.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 1999 2:38 PM
Subject: A practical question about attributes


>Folks,
>
>Having started a heavily philosophical thread about coherent standards, I
want to ask a much more practical question. I am designing an XML schema for
use in an environment that is extremely bandwidth sensitive. I can gain
significant size reductions by representing things as attributes rather than
sub-elements. Here is an example:
>
><session><id>25</id><type>Q</type><num>15</num></session>
>
>57  bytes
>
>as opposed to
>
><session id="25" type="Q" num="15"/>
>
>36 bytes
>
>Here's the question: does anyone know of any gotchas in using attributes
instead of elements? Parsing issues, etc.?
>
>TIA,
>Jeff
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Kuantech, Inc.                            http://www.kuantech.com
>Jeffrey E. Sussna, Principal                     jes at kuantech.com
>
>Distributed Content Architectures for Dynamic Online Applications
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