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Norman Walsh wrote: > / "Paul W. Abrahams" <abrahams@v...> was heard to say: > | I like the idea of what you're trying to do, but giving particular PIs an > | essential function in XML seems to me the wrong way to go. > > Can someone point me to some arguments against PIs? There seems to be > strong sentiment against them, and I don't understand why. Some things > are exactly that, expectations that you wish to pass on to a processor. I see PIs as something you wish to pass on to a particular processor or class of processors. My sense of the matter (admittedly, unsupported by any documents I know of) is that they are, or ought to be, inessential to the general interpretation of a document. In other words, a well-formed and valid document ought to remain well-formed and valid if all PIs are omitted. Examples of PIs would be an indication that the following space character should be non-breaking or that a page break would be desirable at this point. These would be "tweaks" in the form of typographical hints, quite possibly particular to a specific version of a document typeset with one specific typesetting program, e.g., TeX. Paul Abrahams
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