XML Grove Plan

Sean Mc Grath (digitome@iol.ie)
Sat, 13 Sep 1997 09:44:33 +0100

[From Jon Bosak]
> 3. Discussion of the proposition that the XML spec should say
> more about what the processor passes the App. John Tigue has
> volunteered to write an XML Grove Plan; while there is little
> sentiment that this should be made normative, it might serve
> usefully as either a separate application note or an appendix.

I raised this issue a long time ago and I am delighted to see it is being
considered for inclusion in XML. Having a grove plan gives developers
a sanity checker for their parsers. Having a grove plan with a syntactic form
that can be output from a parsers internal tree representation provides a
mechanism
for testing and comparing parsers. Having a grove plan allows apps to be
developed
that process post-parse data-structures as opposed to using an API.

>From my perspective the importance of this merits normative inclusion
in the spec. I am reminded of that well thumbed quintet of pages in
8879. Annex G of appendix B, attatchement 1. Otherwise known as ESIS -
the starting point for many an SGML structure controlled application.

Sean Mc Grath

sean@digitome.com
Digitome Electronic Publishing
http://www.digitome.com