Steven D'Aprano schrieb: > On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:40:01 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > >> Quite apart from a human thinking it's pretty or not pretty, it's *not >> valid XML* if the XML declaration isn't immediately at the start of the >> document <URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-prolog-dtd>. Many XML >> parsers will (correctly) reject such a document. > > You know, I'd really like to know what the designers were thinking when > they made this decision. > > "You know Bob, XML just isn't hostile enough to anyone silly enough to > believe it's 'human-readable'. What can we do to make it more hostile?" > > "Well Fred, how about making the XML declaration completely optional, so > you can leave it out and still be vald XML, but if you include it, you're > not allowed to precede it with semantically neutral whitespace?" > > "I take my hat off to you." > > > This is legal XML: > > """<?xml version="1.0"?> > <greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>""" > > and so is this: > > """ > <greeting >Hello, world!</greeting >""" > > > but not this: > > """ <?xml version="1.0"?> > <greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>""" > > > You can't get this sort of stuff except out of a committee.
do not forget to mention that trailing whitespace is evil as well!!! And that for some reason some characters below \x20 aren't allowed in XML even if it's legal utf-8 - for what reason I'd really like to know... Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
