Folks,Boy, this solves a bunch of problems for me, both with THREDDS catalogs and XML FGDC files.
Thanks. Roland If found this succinct explanation of the CDATA marker at: http://access1.sun.com/techarticles/CDATA/CDATAArticle.html ------------------------------------------------------ How to Handle CDATA Sections in XML Files Using the Java[tm] Platform APIs for XML Parsing (JAXP) by Michelle Cope (April 2002) We want to hear from you! Please send us your FEEDBACK.The following article may contain actual software programs in source code form. This source code is made available for developers to use as needed, pursuant to the terms and conditions of this license.
XML files often contain character data that an enclosing application requires to extract as presented - for example, input data for a subroutine or XML markup to be displayed in a browser. Any parser parsing the XML file should not interpret this character data and present it to the application unchanged. Any character data marked as a CDATA section in an XML file will not be interpreted by the parser. An example of a CDATA section is as follows:
<![CDATA[Hello this is the content of a CDATA section]]>All CDATA sections have three components: a CDATA start marker, ' <![CDATA', a character content body. For example, "Hello this is the content of a CDATA section", and a CDATA end marker, ']]>'. A CDATA section is often used for character data that includes special XML characters, such as '&' and '<' that need to be preserved for the calling application.
. . . Joe Wielgosz wrote:
Hi Benno,1) you can always use it. it is part of the basic XML syntax definition. 2) mail client behavior - i am constantly hitting reply thinking the reply will go to the mailing list, but it goes to the sender instead..- JoeOn Mon, 2002-11-18 at 11:02, Benno Blumenthal wrote:Joe Wielgosz wrote:Benno, Have you considered using the CDATA marker? - JoeUntil you mentioned it, I had never heard of it. 1) can I always use it, or does it have to be declared in the DTD? 2) why didn't you post the suggestion to THREDDS -- I suspect I am not the only one unaware. BennoOn Fri, 2002-11-15 at 12:53, Martin Benno Blumenthal wrote:I mention this only because it is an issue that should be addressed: personally it seems more of a pain than anything else. Text that I use to construct the contents of the documentation tag <documentation> This is the text I mean </documentation> occasionally has embedded html in it, mostly the <b></b> and <i></i> needed to do paper references. These tags are technically illegal in our xml document, so I am supposed to change the < and > to an entity and then it will parse. That, however, changes the meaning of the string, i.e. HTML no longer thinks they are tags, either. I could take the tags out, but then I lose meaning, albeit not a lot. So could we allow some formatting in the documentation? Alternatively, can we allow meaningless tags as far as XML is concerned? Benno-- Joe Wielgosz / address@hidden --------------------------------------------------- Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) Institute for Global Environment and Society (IGES) http://www.iges.org-- Dr. M. Benno Blumenthal address@hidden International Research Institute for climate prediction The Earth Institute at Columbia University Lamont Campus, Palisades NY 10964-8000 (845) 680-4450