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Re: Come On, DTD, Come On! Thoughts on DSDL Part 9

• To: mcarr@a... (Marcus Carr)
• Subject: Re: Come On, DTD, Come On! Thoughts on DSDL Part 9
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 06:32:45 -0400 (EDT)
• Cc: paul@p... (Paul Prescod), gkholman@C... (G. Ken Holman), xml-dev@l... (XML-Dev Mailing list)
• In-reply-to: <3D06E8E1.C920E0AD@a...> from "Marcus Carr" at Jun 12, 2002 04:23:29 PM

Marcus Carr scripsit:

> I'm inclined to agree with Paul, but I'm not really sure whether there's a
> sensible role for an extended DTD syntax. While I like the suggestions that John
> Cowan has put forth, I wonder if we might end up with something almost exactly
> like RELAX NG but without XML syntax. If that were the case, I don't really see
> much benefit.

*heh heh heh heh*

> Even as a long-time campaigner for the preservation of DTDs, I'm pretty much
> willing to trade them for the simplicity and elegance of RELAX NG. This would be
> especially true if we got to a point where we had datatypes and namespaces in
> DTDs, and then decided that we had to figure out how to integrate Schematron
> rules...

No problem, we embed them in PIs.  :-)(


> Could someone spell out the role that they see extended DTDs playing? (Ken?) I'm
> not saying that there isn't one, just that it doesn't jump up and bite me.

They will appeal to people who want to stick with DTDs but need access
to a modern facility or two.  I suspect that nobody, or almost nobody,
will write validation DTDs that use all the new features: such people are
indeed more likely to switch to RELAX NG.  For that matter, dtdinst
(a tool that maps DTDs into either an ad hoc XML syntax or RELAX NG)
is so structure-preserving that it becomes feasible to treat DTD
syntax as a 3rd syntax for RNG (beside the XML and the compact syntaxes)
and simply use RNG tools to do external validation.

The purpose of standardizing things is to provide a way for people to
do what they want more readily, not to constrain them to do what they
don't want (the lesson of the XML Schema resistance).

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan@r...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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    • From: Marcus Carr <mcarr@a...>

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