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Re: Re: Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task tobe sol

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Re: Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task tobe solved by RDDL)
• From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
• Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 00:05:08 -0800
• References: <NCBBKFMJCLIMOBIGKFMJIECDHBAA.ldodds@i...> <5.1.0.14.2.20020119134312.022f5090@p...> <005101c1a1f6$aa4c2bf0$0100000a@nico> <1011565143.868.329.camel@l...>

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:

> Speaking for myself only, I find the notion of "document type" to be a
> mistake in itself, an odd relic of programmers' expectations of
> tightly-controlled data formats.  If you find it more useful to
> categorize every acceptable combination of parts from different
> namespaces, you're welcome to do so, of course.

I think "document type" is much more useful if you don't think of it as
being a single root element, but rather a collection of root elements
that provide different views into the same set of elements.

> Just keep in mind that a few of us find "the bigger problem of
> associating meta-data to document types" to be much less interesting and
> less useful than "what is this namespace supposed to tell me?"

One of the useful things about such meta-data is it provides yet another
layer of context into the use of the namespace. Yes, it is interesting
to know that XHTML provides human-readable stuff in HTML format, but the
enclosing metadata tells you what that human-readable stuff is
describing (a part, a restaurant, a bug). I don't think you can say one
is more interesting than the other.

-- Ron

• References:
  • Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task to be solved by RDDL)
    • From: "Leigh Dodds" <ldodds@i...>
  • Re: Re: Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task to be solved by RDDL)
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: Re: Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task to be solved by RDDL)
    • From: "Nicolas Lehuen" <nicolas.lehuen@u...>
  • Re: Re: Flexible Schemas (was RE: The task tobe solved by RDDL)
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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