The W3C XML Core Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft for XML 1.1, previously called 'XML Blueberry.' XML 1.1 is written as "a series of alterations to the XML 1.0 Recommendation, such that its numbered sections correspond to those of the XML 1.0 Recommendation; sections of the V1.0 Recommendation that do not appear in the new document remain unchanged in XML 1.1." As outlined in the XML Blueberry Requirements, XML version 1.1 resolves problems related to Unicode and line ending. "The overall philosophy of names has changed since XML 1.0. Whereas XML 1.0 provided a rigid definition of names, wherein everything that was not permitted was forbidden, XML 1.1 names are designed so that everything that is not forbidden (for a specific reason) is permitted. Since Unicode will continue to grow past version 3.1, further changes to XML can be avoided by allowing almost any character, including those not yet assigned, in names. In addition, XML 1.0 attempts to adapt to the line-end conventions of various modern operating systems, but discriminates against the conventions used on IBM and IBM-compatible mainframes. As a result, XML documents on mainframes are not plain text files according to the local conventions. XML 1.0 documents generated on mainframes must either violate the local line-end conventions, or employ otherwise unnecessary translation phases before parsing and after generation." The working group invites comments on the draft through the end of the Last Call review period, 28-June-2002.

Bibliographic information: XML 1.1. W3C Working Draft 25-April-2002. Edited by John Cowan (Reuters). Version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xml11-20020425/. Latest Version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/. Previous Version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml11-20011213/.

From the Introduction:

The W3C's XML 1.0 Recommendation was first issued in 1998, and despite the issuance of many errata culminating in a Second Edition of 2000, has remained (by intention) unchanged with respect to what is well-formed XML and what is not. This stability has been extremely useful for interoperability. However, the Unicode Standard on which XML 1.0 relies for character specifications has not remained static, evolving from version 2.0 to version 3.1 and beyond. Characters not present in Unicode 2.0 may already be used in XML 1.0 character data. However, they are not allowed in XML names such as element type names, attribute names, enumerated attribute values, processing instruction targets, and so on. In addition, some characters that should have been permitted in XML names were not, due to oversights and inconsistencies in Unicode 2.0.

A new XML version, rather than a set of errata to XML 1.0, is being created because the changes affect the definition of well-formed documents. XML 1.0 processors must continue to reject documents that contain new characters in XML names or new line-end conventions. The distinction between XML 1.0 and XML 1.1 documents will be indicated by the version number information in the XML declaration at the start of each document.

Suggestions for XML Names: The normative appendix entitled "Character Classes" in the previous WD has been rewritten to form a non-normative appendix "Suggestions for XML Names." The suggestions "define what is believed to be best practice in the construction of XML names used as element names, attribute names, processing instruction targets, entity names, notation names, and the values of attributes of type ID, and are intended as guidance for document authors and schema designers. All references to Unicode must be understood with respect to a particular version of the Unicode Standard greater than or equal to 3.0; which version should be used is left to the discretion of the document author or schema designer. The first two suggestions are directly derived from the rules given for identifiers in the Unicode Standard, version 3.0, and exclude all control characters, enclosing nonspacing marks, non-decimal numbers, private-use characters, punctuation characters (with the noted exceptions), symbol characters, unassigned codepoints, and whitespace characters. The other suggestions are mostly derived from XML Version 1.0, Appendix B..."