I think in general we need to be very conservative in making
modifications. From a technical point of view, I think the current
version of RELAX NG fulfills its goals fairly well, so I think we
should make a change only when we have a very high degree of
confidence that it will have significant benefits and won't have any
disadvantages. Completely lifting the restriction to my mind falls a
long way short of that hurdle.
What might be possible is to loosen the restriction. In particular,
as far as I remember the case that causes problems is something like
element * { attribute name { "foo" } } & element * { attribute name { "bar" } }
which you can get with microformats. I don't think that case will
cause exponential blow up. Is there a way to revise the restriction
to allow things that people really need without introducing the
possibility of exponential blow-up?
James
