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Re: SGML queries

• To: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
• Subject: Re: SGML queries
• From: Marcus Carr <mcarr@a...>
• Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 09:16:35 +1000
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• References: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B92C@HQ5> <3D7E71E0.2050303@a...> <h2ssnuouil6sb6o5fceh1tfnb177ttm8r3@4...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Arjun Ray wrote:

> ... until the time someone innocently leaves the title blank.
> 
> :  <section>
> :    <para>The laundry basket has a long and fascinating history...
> 
> This throws a validation error (<title> is not omissible if the element
> has no content.)  

By virtue of the fact that the start tag is omissable, the title *is* 
required. Tag omission in the situation that you describe above is 
orthogonal to the desire to create invalid data.

On a deeper level, perhaps a title is the primary indication that a new 
section has started, otherwise the markup people might mark every para 
as a different section with a blank title...

> Some people may try to "fix" this kind of problem - sometimes you really
> can't think of a title - with pernicious mixed content:
> 
>   <!ELEMENT section - - (#PCDATA,para+) >

Now you're basing the structure on what you saw in the data - this whole 
discussion is premised on the idea that the analysis has been carried 
out and the title *is* required. My example provides the means to 
support the structure economically.

> | I'm surprised that there's so little enthusiasm for this - 
> 
> We all learn the hard way...

Just keep practising - I'm sure you'll get the hang of it some day.


-- 
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mcarr@a...
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
        - Einstein

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  • Re: SGML queries
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