[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: external parsed entites (was: A unique ID question ?)

• From: "Martin Bryan" <mtbryan@s...>
• To: <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 09:30:25 -0000

Ken Holman wrote:

>I, for one, hope external parsed entities *do not* go away.

>I need them when I need to handle *one* XML file in *many* small manageable
pieces ... I don't need them for re-use or for sharing, but they provide a
useful convenience.

The key reason for needing external parsed entities is "manageability".
Large documents are not written as monoliths. They are written and reviewed
in sections, with different teams often being used to create and comment on
different sections. If the document needs to be translated this often needs
to be done in sections as well, rather than waiting for the completion of
the last page of the document before you can start translation. The fact
that sections of the final document need to be able to cross refer to each
other requires the use of a global ID scheme, but this is easy to do with
appropriate management of the names that are used to create IDs. Here
namespaces can be of assistance.

Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Until we have a decent
subdocument/embedded link mechanism that has been taken up by a wide range
of tools we *need* to retain external parsed entities in XML

Martin Bryan




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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
unsubscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)

• Prev by Date: RE: The XML decl is not a PI (especially in SAX)
• Next by Date: ANNOUNCE: XPath interface for XT Version 0.85
• Previous by thread: Re: external parsed entites (was: A unique ID question ?)
• Next by thread: dtddiff of XSDL November and September drafts
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread