The W3C have published a revised last call draft of the XML Information Set specification, with a review period ending 23 February 2001.

The specification had previously been in Last Call just over a year ago, but was recently reverted to Working Draft status. Announcing the new draft, Paul Grosso, chair of the XML Core Working Group, noted the change in the design principle for the new spec, and requested that reviewers read the introduction carefully--where the purpose of the spec is noted:

[This specification's] purpose is to provide a consistent set of definitions for use in other specifications that need to refer to the information in a well-formed XML document [XML]. It does not attempt to be exhaustive; the primary criterion for inclusion of an information item or property has been that of expected usefulness in future specifications.

Grosso explained that this meant that the Infoset spec was driven more by the intersection of what other specifications required, rather than their union, and that this version of the the Infoset was more a "library of definitions to facilitate the writing of other specifications," than a defining catalogue of all the information items in an XML document.

The W3C are soliciting feedback on the draft, which should be sent to the InfoSet comments list at www-xml-infoset-comments@w3.org.

Grosso noted that in particular comment was sought on sections 2.16 and 2.17, start and end markers for CDATA sections, on existence of which the Working Group could not reach consensus.

Read the full announcement as sent to XML-DEV.