Re: XML Blueberry Requirements

From: Elliotte Rusty Harold (elharo@metalab.unc.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 21 2001 - 17:55:28 EDT


At 4:43 PM -0400 6/21/01, John Cowan wrote:

>Let me also note that it is only *parsers* that are affected by
>this particular change. It does *not* require change at any level
>above the parser. U+0085 (and hopefully U+2028 as well), like the
>existing CR and LF and CR/LF sequences, would be mapped by a
>Blueberry
>parser to the universal XML convention of LF. Once that is done,
>higher levels will see only LF.
>

Would that it were so. It's not. Among other non-parser things that
will be affected are:

1. Test suites
2. Other specs such as canonical XML
3. All sorts of books and printed documentation that will become
inaccurate as a result of this change.
4. Systems that use a parser to read XML, but will need to be
retested and validated when the parser they use is changed.
5. Systems that rely on regular expressions rather than a full
parser. (I've seen a few of these out in the wild.)

This is just what I can think of off the top of my head. There's probably more.

-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer | +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | The XML Bible (IDG Books, 1999) | | http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/books/bible/ | | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764532367/cafeaulaitA/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Read Cafe au Lait for Java news: http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/ | | Read Cafe con Leche for XML news: http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+



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