XML Companion, The, Third Edition

Legally overlapping structures

There are occasions when it is absolutely essential that ranges of data that span structures must be identified and isolated, despite the strict rules concerning proper element nesting defined in the XML standard. For example, it is common practice in technical documentation for text that has changed since a previous release of the document to be marked as 'revised text', perhaps using a vertical bar in the margin. Yet such text may begin part of the way through one paragraph, and end in the middle of the next. Breaking the range into smaller pieces is always possible, but this would add a number of tags to the document, and would also destroy the significance of the complete unit (if there was any significance ...