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xml-entity PI

• To: XML-Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: xml-entity PI
• From: James William Pye <flaw@r...>
• Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:34:57 -0700
• Organization: rhid development

Greets,

Has there been any discussion in the past about custom sources for
document entities(alternatives to DTD specified entities)?

Yes, I do have something specific in mind, a pair of PIs:

<?xml-entity name='ent' value='val'?>
and
<?xml-entities type='text/xml-dtd' href='someURI'?>
<?xml-entities type='text/xml-entities' href='someURI.xml'?>

The first form is for simple, quick, in-document declarations, and the
second is for external resources, meant for large[r], reusable sets of
entities.

As the existence of the 'type' pseudo attribute implies in the second
PI, processors should be capable of handling different types of sources,
whether DTD, a custom XML entity source, a newline seperated list of
assignments, or whatever.[Preferrably through a plugin system of sorts
:]

A format like this seems particularly natural/appealing to me:

<entities>
 <ent_name>entity content</ent_name>
 <another_ent>foobar</another_ent>
</entities>

(of course in the referencing document: &ent_name; and &another_ent;)

Perhaps there should be scoping limitations depending on where the PI
appears.

With the many validation mechanisms available today, it seems a bit
obtuse to rely solely on DTDs for sources of entities.

Thoughts, or am I beating a dead horse that I've never seen before?

-- 
Regards,
        James William Pye

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