Subject: RE: Re: mixing mimedirectory ABNF and XML

From: [email-masked] (Roger D)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:24:19 -0400

John Stracke <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>Greg FitzPatrick wrote:
>
>> Thanks for pointing that out John.  The example should of course look
>> like this: [...]
>> 
>> DTOPEN;language="XML1.0":<OPTIMESET ID="123"> <OPTERM> 20020101/
>> 20021231</OPTERM></OPTIMESET>
>> 
>OK, then. Yeah, that might be reasonable--take the property value and 
>pass it through an XML parser. 'Course, I might be biased, because I'm 
>already using an XML parser in my app, so it doesn't seem like any 
>particular burden to me. ;-)
>
>You might consider going for a simplified subset of XML--e.g., 
>forbidding the internal DTD subset, the doctype, etc. That'll make it 
>easier for people who don't have any need for a full-power XML parser. 
>An XML parser isn't a large hit in a desktop or server app; but I could 
>see SKiCal being used in some kind of embedded system--say, to turn on 
>the Open sign during opening hours.

I don't have a strong opinion, since I'm not implementing SkiCal, but it does seem a bit wierd to use an XML-like syntax in just one place in a standard, requiring an implementer to include an XML parser just to parse that one field. There is an XML version of iCal being worked on, and I don't have a problem with it in that context, but in and RFC 2445 context I think it's a bit ugly to use a syntax as unlike the rest of 2445 as XML is.

--Roger

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