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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: A parentless element that is not the document node - how?
 We still use N&F Designer on a regular basis to work with customers in designing DTDs, for all the reasons described in this thread. As for orphan elements, N&F will sometimes display an element as if it were an orphan, even though it isn't, just because it happens to appear first in the DTD. One of the many non-fatal bugs the software had, despite which, it is still my first choice for designing a DTD. Bruce B. Cox SA4XMLT USPTO/OCIO/AETS 703-306-2606 -----Original Message----- From: W. Hugh Chatfield I.S.P. [mailto:hchatfield@u...] Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 4:11 PM To: Bob Foster; Betty Harvey; Roger L. Costello Cc: xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: A parentless element that is not the document node - how? Well I know my very first SGML project was the creation of the first version of the Canadian CALS DTD. I was coming out of a quarter century of IT work and just starting on a new career with SGML?in Microstar. I knew systems analysis, design and data modelling... but did not know SGML DTD syntax very well. The people I was working with knew a little SGML and the customer knew none. N&FD allowed you to create a DTD using drag and drop techniques.. and concentrate entirely on the business task of creating a data model [as opposed to the technical task of expressing that model formally in some syntax]. A rectangle was an element, a tilde on the rectangle represented attributes, connectors showed and/or logic, occurrance symbols could occur on elements or connectors. Tree could be expanded or contracted. Large number of reports (including some standard CALS DTD reports) could be generated automatically if you used the tools to capture the "documentation" as well. The actual DTD syntax could be genereated with a button push (save as DTD). Parsing was done with James Clarks SP inside. The N&FD designer tool was originally meant to be one of a suite of tools to support Computer Aided Document Engineering (CADE).. an engineering process to deal with the entire process of delivering information. The main claim to fame was the ability to "display" and explore the tree structure without having to know a speck of SGML syntax. As B Harvey said... absolutely invaluable for presentations and DTD walkthroughs. A subject matter expert could be shown the basics of the Data Model in a few minutes be talking and contributing to the design process. Latest versions supported XML with wizards to go XML <-> SGML. Announced but unreleased versions supported schemas. After I left Microstar (by then Open Text) I provided support services for N&FD until they withdrew the product. I could produce any screen shot you want. Any particular DTD in mind???? Now I have to admit that for very large complex, and especially very modular DTDs, N&FD ran into problems... the main one being that it would create one big DTD from all the pieces... you could not modify such a modular DTD.. although you could at least display it. Cheers Hugh CyberSpace Industries 2000 Inc. XML Consulting & Training http://www.urbanmarket.com/csi2000 Visit Historic Perth Ontario: http://www.all-about-perth.com [I attach a 129K JPG showing a screen shot of xhtml transitional 1.0. I have opened it up one level and expanded a few things in the head. I am pointing at the root element and looking at the attributes on the html element... in particular I am editing the id attribute... which you see is of type id. The leaf symbols shown are PCDATA and EMPTY. A bar on right side of an element or parameter entity means that element/PE is already expanded somewhere else on the screen.] -----Original Message----- From: Bob Foster [mailto:bob@o...] Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 2:46 PM To: Betty Harvey; Roger L. Costello Cc: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: A parentless element that is not the document node - how? From: "Betty Harvey" <harvey@e...> > I really wish that tools like XML Spy and Extensibility would provide > the same functionality as Near and Far for XML Schema's. Although I > don't create DTDs in a graphical tool - Near and Far is the greatest > QA and presentation tool for a DTD. Near and Far seems to have been a casualty of the Microstar acquisition. What was great about it? Does even a screen shot survive? Bob Foster ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl> 
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