[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] DTD's and namespaces
I am looking for ways to make it easy for people to find and understand public tender notices (or solicitation synopses). SGML DTD's are routinely used to format at least 150,000 of these per year. Since they can be in any of eleven languages we also have a coded multilingual vocabulary of over 9000 product and service definitions, as well as city names and subject headings. I thought that XML might provide a neat way to standardise these notices across many sites and allow selective searching, retrieval and display of these notices in any language. But I can't find enough guidance on designing DTD's or using namespaces to see clearly how to do this, or if it can be done. I have two specific problems: when to use elements or attributes, and how to make reference to external documents or language vocabularies. The namespace debate has further confused me here. My first humble attempt looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE TenderNotice [ <!ELEMENT TenderNotice (ContractingAuthority, (ContractInformation, ContactDetails, Reference)*) > <!ATTLIST TenderNotice PublicationDate CDATA #REQUIRED Xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED > <!-- I don't understand what should be treated as elements and what as attributes so elements are used below. --> <!ELEMENT ContractingAuthority (OrganisationName, Address)> <!ELEMENT OrganisationName (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Address (Addressline+, Postcode?, Country?) > <!ELEMENT Addressline (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Postcode (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Country (#PCDATA) > <!-- Should be an ISO3166 Code --> <!ELEMENT ContractInformation (ObjectOfContract, EstimatedValue?, DeadlineDate?) > <!ELEMENT EstimatedValue (#PCDATA) > <!-- will need currency attributes --> <!ELEMENT DeadlineDate (date) > <!ATTLIST DeadlineDate DeadlineForReceiptof (Tenders | RequestToParticipate) #REQUIRED <!ELEMENT date (#PCDATA) > <! --in accordance with ISO 2014-1976 (YYYYMMDD) for example. There are other dates that may be equally or more relevant --> <!ELEMENT ObjectOfContract (WorkDescription, CPVCode*) > <!ELEMENT WorkDescription (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT CPVCode (#PCDATA) > <! -- this is the code for Work descriptions with eleven corresponding language versions so it could automatically generate the WorkDescription in a chosen language --> <!ELEMENT ContactDetails (CommonName, Address, (TelephoneNumber, FacsimileNumber, EmailAddress,)? Other*) > <!ELEMENT CommonName (Honorific?, (Initials|GivenName)?, SurName) > <!ELEMENT Honorific (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Initials (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT GivenName (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT SurName (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT TelephoneNumber (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT FacsimileNumber (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT EmailAddress (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Other (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT Reference (#PCDATA)> <! -- this is where I want to provide for references to full tender documents, standard conditions and so on either through URL's, URIs, external entity references or some other mechanism perhaps with Processing instructions. --> ]> I don't know whether this is the right place to ask for answers- but can anyone help or suggest where else could I look? 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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