A call for reason

[Daniel Veillard]

On Mon, Nov 29, 1999 at 05:42:27AM -0800, Don Park wrote:
> >But I start to be quite worried at the idea that for whatever reason
> >SML documents may turn not being a well formed XML one, c.f.:
> >  
> >http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/xml-dev-Nov-1999/1143.html
> 
> The message Daniel quoted was mine asking opinions on the
> idea of removing the name production rule from WF constraints.
> 
> My intent was that there is no real need to make sure that all
> the characters in the tag name are valid characters especially
> since the valid character set is rather beastly.
> 
> Rick Jeliffe who was largely responsible for that valid name
> character set wanted to remove the invalid name error reporting
> requirement but was apparently voted down by XML WG.  I am
> just proposing that same idea again.  If SML processors are
> not required to report the error, then there is no need to
> check each character anymore which will speed things up and
> take up less space.
> 
> Net result is that SML data will be well-formed but invalid
> name error will not be reported.  Is this too much to ask?

  Well, HTML history proved it:
    if parsers don't check for conformance, users won't either.

XML parser don't have to check for validity, how many of the XML
based apps in deployment now do check for it ?

So is SML parsers don't check for valid characters, how will user
discover the problem, why will they care, how will XML parser user
will handle the problem?
The point is that i'm not optimistic about the answer,

Daniel

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