Re: [weirds] feedback on draft-designteam-weirds-using-http

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

On 2012-05-17 22:13, Francisco Obispo wrote:
> If you need to specify non-ascii characters in an XML document, you either have to:
>
> a) Encode the characters in their XML entities ñ ->  ñ  or

1) You can use those "as-is", if you declare the document encoding 
properly (such as by using UTF-8).

2) That doesn't change the repertoire of characters you can use.

3) Also, it's ASCII control characters which are a problem.

> b) use a CDATA instruction: Unparsed Character Data [1]
>
> [1] http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_cdata.asp

-> <http://w3fools.com/>

> The latter approach seems to be more efficient for some.

And it doesn't help at all. In CDATA, you don't need to escape "<" and 
"&", but in turn there are *other* sequences you can't use. See 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-cdata-sect> -- you can't have the 
string "]]>" inside CDATA because it ends the CDATA section.

My recommendation is never ever to use CDATA unless when hand-editing 
*and* when you absolute positively know what you do. If you generate 
with a program, don't ever use it.

Best regards, Julian