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XML 1.1 Spec Hits Some Snags

Posted by Hemos on from the battle-in-the-works dept.

oever writes "News.com reports that the new XML 1.1 specification defines a new newline character, making it incompatible with the 1.0 specifiation. Apparently, IBM has been pushing the new character to avoid having to modify their software, thereby invalidating everybody else's XML software."

3 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. One tiny little update ??? by Dave21212 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Considering what some other vendors have done to standards, one tiny addition (which is an improvement) proposed by IBM shouldn't be a big deal. Sure, it feeds the news hounds, but seriously, compare the scale of the impact of one desirable change to all the suffering caused by other such changes in emerging standards (Microsoft's in particular).

    IBM has contributed so much, it's only natural that some changes might be characterized in the news as benefitting them more than other parties. Is anyone that worried about adding a new EOL character in 1.1 that XML 1.0 "chokes" on ?

    --
    "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
  2. Here's A Good Point by LISNews · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the article, which kind of put it into perspective for me:


    "The truth is that there are a lot of IBM mainframe systems out there, and they're very important," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. "The truth is that this is not really for IBM's benefit, it's for IBM's customers' benefit. And I think that's fair. An international standard shouldn't change for the benefit of a company's future project, but it's clear that end-of-line characters are not a strategic business strategy for IBM."

  3. Re:Full Details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So I want off and read it (Or at least, what appears to be it. There is a rant someway down the page you link to. Is that it?)

    So anyway, I read it. Surprise the surprise, the guy doesn't actually offer any actual examples of where this change would actually cause a break in itself. All he basically does is cry that 0x85 is designated as a new line character, and how dare IBM do such a thing! Then he goes into a rant about IBM, monopolies and patents. Uh huh.

    The fact is that 0x0085 is designated as NEL (NEw Line) as part of the Unicode specification. XML 1.1 allows the use of Unicode, which XML 1.0 did not. Therefore, if you are using XML 1.1, and you are using 0x85 and expect to see a grave a, your document isn't a Unicode compliant document anyway, and you shouldn't be complaining that a non compliant document doesn't work with a compliant parser.

    If all these people want to use 0x85 in their XML 1.1 documents, then they'll have to properly convert them to Unicode as the specification allows. Surprising, that.