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uncle! XHTML Basic and validation

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: uncle! XHTML Basic and validation
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@m...>
• Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 10:29:03 -0500

 I am working on a project that involves embedding HTML content in XML
documents.  The desire is to produce a DTD than can be both used as a
current standard as well as leave open the desire to embed future
vocabularies as content, and to specify future vocabularies using XML
schemas.

Essentially there is an outer XML structure whose elements have mixed
content. XHTML Basic seems like it should provide the best content model,
and using XHTML modularization it should be possible to naturally extent the
content model with new vocabularies as they are developed.

Furthermore, we desire to allow the container elements to serve as a simple
XLink, i.e. point to some external content.

The problem is that many DTD editing packages are totally namespace unaware,
and cannot properly deal with prefixes etc. (no news here). Furthermore some
people desire not to use prefixes at all (i.e. each element has a default
namespace). The way XHTML Basic deals with this is via "xmlns="
'attributes'.

The problem is that Microsoft's MSXML validator chokes when it seems a
defaulted namespace 'attrubute'. Not only that but many many XML editors
seem to choke on XHTML Basic.

How should this be resolved:

1) don't use XHTML Basic (or any XHTML modularization)
2) require all documents to be prefixed even those that don't have XHTML
content.
3) require all content to have explicit xmnls="...xhtml..." declarations.
4) give up and move to XML schemas

Jonathan

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