On Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:13:22 -0700 (MST), John Halleck wrote:
>> This is true. But what I said about the XML spec is true too. In fact it
>> does not appear discuss the MEANING, or possible transformations, of a
>> document at all (Please do correct me if either of these statements is
>> wrong, I could have missed something).
> But I sure can't find anything in the standard that allows any
> parser to hand elements to an application in order different
> than given. (Order is preserved in the DOM, and it is preserved
> in SAX parsers.)
Could this be an issue between the order of elements and that of attributes? There is a guarantee that the
order of elements will be preserved. There is no such guarantee about attributes (section 3.1 or 10 Feb, 98
version).
Maybe the confusion is also about what isn't in the spec. It talks a lot about the order of elements within the
physical structure but not about the order within the document. The order can be flexible in that I could write a
DTD with
<!ENTITY survey_data (shot | station)*>
which means the survey data section can contain any number of shots or stations. There is nothing here to
restrict the order. As opposed to:
<!ENTITY survey_data (station, shot, station)>
which says a survey data element must contain a station, a shot, and another station in that order.
As to the order of the elements within the document, I can't find reference right now. I _think_ this is
guaranteed by the parser section of XML. But the order within the document must be preserved. Otherwise,
how would XPointer/XPath work?
- Richard Knapp
- Richard Knapp
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