Re: <XML:SCRIPT>

Simon St.Laurent (SimonStL@classic.msn.com)
Mon, 13 Jul 98 14:39:48 UT

David Megginson wrote:
>They're not quite the same -- CDATA sections simply shift the parsing
>mode, so that the only delimiter recognised is "]]>" (or "]]"). That
>said, they are purely lexical and somewhat unattractive, and exist
>only as a convenience for people who write XML in regular text
>editing tools.
>
>Once there are XML editing tools in wide-spread use, they will
>probably hide this, so naive authors will just type
>[...good example omitted...]

If and when there are XML editing tools that are any good - and my pessimism
comes from my rather miserable experiences with even the latest HTML tools -
this may be true. In the meantime, lots and lots of experienced coders, the
ones most likely to gravitate to XML, are still going to be hand-coding.

I at least hand-edit all of my 'final' HTML - the XSchema drafts are just
coming through Word's lousy Save as HTML option because I don't have time to
hand-code them too. (The final drafts I'll pick clean by hand.) I really hope
we can do something for the 'naive author' sometime soon, because otherwise
they'll be awfully confused.

This is turning into more of an XML-L discussion; while I've enjoyed being
cranky, I doubt this discussion will bear much more fruit for XML-Dev.

Simon St.Laurent
Dynamic HTML: A Primer / XML: A Primer / Cookies