[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]


On May 16, 2005, at 17:54, Michael Kay wrote:

> There's no such thing as an "end user". Certainly people who author
> documents are not end users. But that doesn't mean they are software
> developers either.

OK.

XML 1.1 adds value to people who see the tags and who *need* particular 
characters in the tags. Of document-oriented authors (as opposed to 
developers creating data-oriented vocabularies and dealing with element 
names while at it) that leaves document authors who are not using--and 
cannot use--an editor that abstracts the tags away and *need* the 
particular characters in the tags (ie. *need* their custom schema using 
characters that weren't allowed in XML 1.0 instead of using XHTML, 
DocBook, TEI or whatever vocabulary that works with XML 1.0).

I still have trouble seeing why this use case justifies breaking 
interop with all the XML 1.0 tools out there. I am not saying it 
wouldn't have been nice to enable it back when XML 1.0 was being 
defined. I also would understand it if it was about characters allowed 
in content. I do think Unicode--astral planes included--for content is 
a must.

The schema issue that started this thread demonstrates that the interop 
problem is not just about swapping the XML parser but the issue has 
ugly ripple effects.

(BTW, most of the time when I write prose in a markup format with my 
author hat on, I consider having to take a look at the tags as a bug in 
the authoring tools--not as something I'd ideally do.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@i...
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/


Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member