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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Proposal Announcement - XML DTDs to XML docs
 Paul Prescod wrote: >> 1) A document syntax specification (a simplified version of well-formed >> documents) >> 2) A syntax for linking to DTDs (and perhaps schemas) internal or external >> (which would depend on XLink) >> 3) A syntax for DTDs providing rules for validation. > >So at what level do I get the equivalent of internal entities and >defaulted attributes? And what levels are required of all XML processors >vs. optional? At what level do you get defaulted attributes now? Do you get defaulted attributes in a well-formed document without a DTD? Right now, it doesn't look like it. This could be in level 1, if default attributes were deemed necessary to document syntax, but I'd expect to see it in level 3. Internal entities could be defined much as they are now, at the start of a document, within a structure set aside for that purpose using <ENTITY> (or whatever develops) instead of <!ENTITY>. This would indeed need to be covered in level 1, unless you could live without internal entities. In the past you seemed quite happy about forcing scripts to be external to a document, so I can't see why it would be so terrible to exile entities - and DTDs as well - to separate documents either. I don't think it would be necessary, though, any more than it's necessary now. As for requiring levels, level 1 would serve a similar purpose to well-formed documents today. 2 would be a prerequisite for 3, of course. >For example: One company's DTD extension could add in SGML tag ommission. >The start- and end-tag of an element could be implied, without violating >well-formedness. So then you could use that company's parser through SAX >and get a completely different set of events than if you used someone >else's parser. After all, changing the parse is one of the >responsibilities of the DTD. I think this is overstating your case rather dramatically. I could do something similarly brutal by creating a <? shorttags ?> PI at the start of a regular XML document and using the implied tags. No one else could read my documents, but I sure could. Not only that, but I already proposed separating the document syntax - which includes full start- and end-tags - from the DTD. There's no reason this proposal would allow the DTD to modify the basic document syntax and markup, period. >I don't know what you mean by full schema information. DTDs serve as >schemas (in addition to changing the parse). If you propose to replace >DTDs, then you are in part designing a new schema language. We can argue about the meaning of the word schema all you like; it's not that exciting for me. XML-Data performs similar mapping, but attempts to add a lot more, parts which I see more as data schemas. If this is a schema, then so be it. >My suggestion >is to develop a new schema language *without* changing DTDs. In other >words, I am suggesting you make your project smaller, not larger. I would >suggest you forget about entities, defaulted attributes, etc. Leave those >to DTDs. My suggestion is that DTD's present a significant problem in their current format, and that they could be improved significantly. I would enjoy being able to focus on elements and attributes, the core of XML (and SGML) document syntax, and worry less about the rest. This project already is an attempt to be smaller, but to provide a place for new things to grow. Simon St.Laurent Dynamic HTML: A Primer / XML: A Primer / Cookies xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...) 
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