Re: Comments, parsers, XPointers

Chris Maden (crism@ora.com)
Wed, 20 May 1998 13:26:05 -0400 (EDT)

[John E. Simpson]
> From previous (sometimes contentious) discussions on this list, I
> gather that there's no provision in SAX for passing document <!--
> comments --> to a downstream application.
>
> The XPointer WD, production 12, allows for relative addressing by
> node type (element, PI, and so on), *including* comments.
>
> Does the downstream invisibility of comments imply that a URL like
> this will always fail?
> somedoc.xml#child(1,#comment)
>
> Thanks for any insights,

Insight: XML != SAX.

A purely SAX implementation will not see comments, so an XPointer
implementation based on it will fail with that pointer.

However, a different XML parser may still have the comments, and an
XPointer based on it may well find them. A complete XPointer
implementation would need to have access to the comments, though I'm
not entirely sure what the purpose would be (except possibly for
editing applications).

-Chris

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