Is CDATA "structure"?

[Nik O]

Yes, indeed, the MacOS uses CR-delimited text files.  We do quite a bit of
out markup production on Macs, with content management on MS-Windows PCs
(though that is moving to Linux/GNU machines).  So we deal with all three
common flavors of text file delimiters.

Expat implements the XML 1.0 spec correctly (i discovered this the hard way,
when Expat reported offsets that were different that i expected in my
CRLF-delimited files).

John Cowan got to this earlier today, but to amplify his point...

The following excerpt is from Tim Bray's truly excellent
annotated XML 1.0 Specification (http://www.xml.com/axml/testaxml.htm or
http://www.xml.com/axml/target.html to omit the explanation frame).

======= Begin spec excerpt =======
2.11 End-of-Line Handling
XML parsed entities are often stored in computer files which, for editing
convenience, are organized into lines. These lines are typically separated
by some combination of the characters carriage-return (#xD) and line-feed
(#xA).

To simplify the tasks of applications, wherever an external parsed entity or
the literal entity value of an internal parsed entity contains either the
literal two-character sequence "#xD#xA" or a standalone literal #xD, an XML
processor must pass to the application the single character #xA. (This
behavior can conveniently be produced by normalizing all line breaks to #xA
on input, before parsing.)
======= End spec excerpt =======

<rant original_post_to="Z3950IW">
  <excerpt>
..much of the internet is still constrained by Unix's feeble 7-bit character
TTY legacy.  This latter issue is echoed in Java's lack of _unsigned_ bytes
(!), and XML's auto-conversion of CRLF-delimited text records to
LF-delimited records (yet another legacy/bias from Unix).
  </excerpt>
  <question>
Is there historical basis to the above statement?  It was a deduction based
upon the old Xenix "text mode" I/O and the probability that most of the
developers of the XML standard were based in the Unix world.
  </question>
</rant>

Regards,
-Nik O, Content Mgmt Solutions, Jackson, Wyo.



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