[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XML-Data: advantages over DTD syntax?
At 10:13 AM 10/1/97 BST, Henry S. Thompson wrote: >Without responding to the details of Murray and Len's exchange, two >points: > >1) Murray is of course right that the logic of content models is not >made any easier by changing their notation; > >2) Complexity is in the eye of the beholder, and the advantage to the >user of being able to use the SAME graphical UI to construct both >instance and schema might be taken to operate in favour of the schema >approach in this area. Of course, if such an editor were designed using a Design Patterns approach, with a common abstract base class for the methods used to construct a DTD or a document, you could have the same thing. However, I'm not sure that I would *want* to construct the XML-Data schemas the same way I create XML documents - it looks like there would still be a fair amount of typing, more than I need to create a DTD. Of course, it *would* be nice to have graphical tools for creating DTDs which explicitly show the inheritance relationships. But I don't see how an alternative syntax helps me to create such tools. >Note: I am not now nor have I ever been a Microsoft employee, nor is >Steve De Rose. Microsoft paid for my trip to Redmond during which >the foundations for the XML-Data document were laid, but they don't >own or operate me. > >I've learned by working with our co-authors at Microsoft and their >colleagues that there are people in Redmond who lack horns and are >both technically competent and genuinely interested in standards. I do not believe that Microsoft owns you or Steve De Rose, nor that Microsoft employees are inherently evil. >Accordingly, I'd be greatful if those commenting on this document >could avoid the cheap rhetorical device of referring to "the Microsoft >approach", implying thereby that it shouldn't be taken seriously >because we all know that Microsoft are {only in it for the money, >aiming at world domination, fundamentally duplicitous, . . .}, and >concentrate on technical issues. I find it interesting how much you read into the phrase "the Microsoft approach" - after all, it *is* an approach advocated by Microsoft, as opposed to the approach which has been accepted by standardization committees. I really do see great value in having a standard approach, and one which is supported by tools like SP, Jade, etc. The standardization committees are there to ensure these standard approaches. Now if I look at the XML White Paper from Microsoft's "Standards" page for information on XML, it does not even mention the industry-standard DTDs, instead, it tells me "Microsoft has proposed a 'Document Type Definition' (DTD) syntax for expressing the schema for an XML document directly within XML itself, allowing XML data to describe its own structure. Expressing schemata within XML adds great power to the XML format because it makes it possible for software examining certain data to understand its structure without earlier knowledge about the data or its meaning." To me, it looks as though they are championing this as an alternative to DTDs. In fact, someone who did not already know about DTDs would have no idea that they exist in XML, or that the term 'Document Type Definition' were not invented by Microsoft. I know that you do not represent Microsoft, but I do think that Microsoft's marketing materials indicate a desire to support XML-Data instead of DTDs, and I am concerned about the possibility of a split in the industry similar to the Java wars that we are now experiencing. I would like to see a lot of the functionality of Architectural Forms or XML-Data in SGML/XML, and I would like to see it supported by standards. Does XML-Data do anything that XML with HyTime would not do? Is it only an alternative syntax? Jonathan *************************************************************************** Jonathan Robie jwrobie@m... http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703 http://www.poet.com *************************************************************************** xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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