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

life support for DTDs? was RE: misprocessing namespaces)

• To: "'Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)'" <clbullar@i...>, "Mike Champion" <mc@x...>, "The Deviants" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: life support for DTDs? was RE: misprocessing namespaces)
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@m...>
• Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 10:09:36 -0500
• References: <6D54B6A5DCF9D311971600D0B74758C101441B66@a...>

But they cheated(was RE:  misprocessing namespaces) (was Re:
 There i s a meaning, but it's not in the data alone)Len,

"Problem is, DTDs don't seem to be dieing as ordained.  Now
we have a moreorless permanent incompatibility by design.
Brilliant. "

One might have made the argument that DTDs are dying as ordained by the W3C,
but this is only part of the story.

1) MSXML can't properly validate the latest XHTML DTD, so it appears that
Microsoft is not seriously supporting DTDs
2) James Clark tells the XML community to move on, at this point he is
certainly not the voice of the W3C

The plain fact is that the major commercial entities have already moved on
and the new work in XML is focussed directly at the various schema
languages. If namespaces could be made to work _properly_ with DTDs, and I
am sure this is possible with a few clever hacks, then I think DTDs are
actually quite easy to work with. But as I've said, this seems to be a done
deal, and at present I would rather focus on making XML better for the
future rathering than arguing old battles long gone.

This applies to both namespace and DTDs. Perhaps if anyone is really
interested in keeping DTDs alive, they might publish such a proposal to fix
the problem, accompanied by some software that implements the proposal. Then
we would be able to see if it flies.

Otherwise, as we say: "Call the code."

Jonathan

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: life support for DTDs? was RE: misprocessing namespaces)
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>

• References:
  • But they cheated(was RE: misprocessing namespaces) (was Re: There i s a meaning, but it's not in the data alone)
    • From: "Anderson, John" <John@B...>

• Prev by Date: RE: Co-operating with Architectural Forms
• Next by Date: RE: But they cheated(was RE: misprocessing namespaces) (was Re: There i s a meaning, but it's not in the data alone)
• Previous by thread: But they cheated(was RE: misprocessing namespaces) (was Re: There i s a meaning, but it's not in the data alone)
• Next by thread: Re: life support for DTDs? was RE: misprocessing namespaces)
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread