John Cowan <jcowan@[...].com>  wrote:
| Arjun Ray scripsit:

| The practice of the XML community has been overwhelmingly to grant the
| GI fundamental importance: fulminating against this sociological fact
| will not make it go away.

A sociological fact is one thing.  Deeming it immutable and more, worthy
of sanction in the form of a standard to enforce it, is another.

(Also, isn't DSDL in the picture here?  Why then is just the current state
of only the "XML community" decisive?)

|>  I suppose I'm also asking for an answer to the issue of "ontology" I 
|>  raised earlier: what are attributes for?
| 
| There simply does not exist any generally accepted view of when attributes 
| should be used rather than child elements.  

I note that you dodged the question again. ;-)

| Therefore, it is important for a neutrally usable schema language to 
| support them as identically as possible,

I don't see how neutrality is important, unless it is established policy
to bless what appears to be current practice, no matter how ill-informed.

| excepting the obvious (attributes are unordered and can't contain elements
| or other attributes).

So, if they are different, why the push for identical treatment?  I also
note (in view of a recent thread) that it seems to be a common maturation
experience to grow from attribute-happy to element-wise.  I don't see how
making potentially unwise decisions even easier than they are would make
experience acquired any less painful.   


-----------------------------------------------------------------
The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org> , an
initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> 

The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/

To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>