Two typos in and a suggestion for the XML Proposal

Mark Kvale (kvale@phy.ucsf.EDU)
Tue, 16 Dec 97 13:56:32 +0000

In updating my parser to the XML Proposal of 8 December, I find that
there seems to be two typos in the EBNF production rules:

1) The encoding declaration

[81] EncodingDecl ::= S 'encoding' Eq '"' EncName '"' | "'" EncName "'"

should have parentheses around the quoted names:

[81'] EncodingDecl ::= S 'encoding' Eq ('"'EncName '"' | "'" EncName "'")

2) The version info production

[25] VersionInfo ::= S 'version'
Eq ('"VersionNum"' | "'VersionNum'")

Here VersionNum is a nonterminal, not a literal string, and I think
what was meant was

[25'] VersionInfo ::= S 'version' Eq
('"' VersionNum '"' | "'" VersionNum "'")

I also have one suggestion for improvement of the proposal. The notation
type production is

[58] NotationType ::= 'NOTATION' S '(' S? Name
(S? '|' Name)* S? ')'

It allows for space before the the alternation '|' but not after. It
would be more symmetric to have

[58'] NotationType ::= 'NOTATION' S '(' S? Name
(S? '|' S? Name)* S? ')'

as in the enumeration production. Comments?

-Mark