Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
Benoit PAPILLAULT <Benoit.PAPILLAULT@g...> writes:
> I can't find a precise documentation on Processing Instruction, except
> on the W3C web server, but it's really not enough. Is there a more
> complete definition, along with real samples. I'm trying to implement
> some scripting features and 'm very interested in using XML Processing
> Instructions.
They're a black box. In SGML, a processing instruction is just a
bunch of text, with no predefined meaning; in XML, the processing
instruction is a name followed optionally by a bunch of text, also
with no predefined meaning. That means that an application should
look at a processing instruction and (usually) ignore it if it doesn't
seem to make sense.
Of course, this isn't very robust, and there have been two suggestions
for improvements:
1. The old XML WG considered allowing PI targets to be
Namespace-qualified, but in the end there wasn't enough demand, and
the shift to attribute-based NS declarations would have killed that
anyway.
2. Various people have suggested following a lead from recent SGML
developments and requiring the PI target to be a notation name.
Since notations are almost never used in the XML world, that might
be a non-starter.
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson david@m...
http://www.megginson.com/
xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
unsubscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
|
