[XML-SIG] Change in reporting of CDATA sections

[Uche Ogbuji]

On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 15:47, Andrew Clover wrote:
>  > I personally think that CDATA sections are a mistake. They
>  > shouldn't have been in XML, and people should not use them.
> 
> I kind of agree; their use-case is very marginal. Typing a few extra 
> < and &s is not usually much of a hardship even to hand-coders.
> I would have liked to have seen XML lose all the nonsense about DTDs, 
> default attributes and entity references too, but it's a bit too late now!

I disagree, and I use CDATA sections a lot.  Try writing an article
about XML *in* XML (e.g. XHTML).  You might also become a fan :-)

They are also useful to augment the toolchain in some scenarios where
you're dealing with unknown data sources or unsophisticated authors.

As long as people understand that they're a simple lexical convenience,
I'm not sure what their harm is.  I'm not sure any level of DOM has a
sane treatment of CDATA sections, but this is the fault of DOM, not XML
1.0.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
A survey of XML standards - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-stand4/
When to use elements versus attributes - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-eleatt.html
Introducing PyRXP - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/02/11/py-xml.html
XML in the financial services industry - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think22.html
Python Web services developer: The real world, Part 2 - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-pyth16/
Keep your XML clean - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9012