Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Proposed SAX Revisions
Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 19 Mar 1998 12:54:27
David G. Durand wrote:
>
> Please, please, please, allow me a way to find out if an element was
> "empty". (i.e. written <e/>). I use this information when I write DTDs, and
> intend to continue doing so. I also know, from the long discussions in the
> XML-SIG that I am not alone in using this syntax to represent a distinction
> that I want preserved and detectable by applications.
>
Whatever the desirability of this - and I'm neutral - my understanding is
that currently the spec makes no distinction between <e></e> and </e>. IOW
documents differ only in the byte stream and not in the result of parsing.
An analogy is that
Lord's and Lord's
are completely equivalent. I therefore think it would be incorrect and
misleading for SAX to implement this - sorry.
P.
Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg