[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Internal subset equivalent in new schema proposals?
>> > Argh. Documents are data. The dichotomy is in your head. Doesn't XML >> > itself makes this abundantly clear?... >> >> Documents might be data, but the dichotomy is not just in our heads. XML >> has a clear bias towards linear, prose-oriented verbiage. How else to >> explain mixed content, the significance of order, ... > >I find it interesting that you use the fact that XML supports things that >other languages do not [as] evidence of XML's bias... A document is information organised for human communication; data is information organised for machine processing. XML can do both, but I stick with my original claim that it is optimised for the former. I wasn't complaining that it contains many redundant features which would not be there in a data-oriented syntax. I have learned not to use those features, and I try to explain patiently when people ask yet again whether they should be using elements or attributes... Rather my complaint was about things that I'd like to do in the data interchange world but can't. As Ron says, I can't do data typing in XML 1.0, and Paul's explanation doesn't alter the fact. The complaint in my original post was my recent discovery that the internal DTD subset destroys many of the assumptions I have made in my applications about the conformance of the incoming document to a schema. Specifically: - if I'm quite clever with my EntityResolver I can ensure that the input XML uses a particular external DTD - if I choose, I can ensure that my application uses a validating parser - but I can't stop the input XML using an internal DTD subset which overrides declarations in my external DTD, nor can I (using SAX) detect that it has done so. [ - so my application must be prepared for anything - so my application has to do full validation itself - so there's not much point having a DTD in the first place ... ] Actually, the problem is not quite as bad as this: the internal DTD subset can override constraints in my attribute declarations but not in my element declarations. Let us be thankful for small mercies. This seems to be another reason for using elements rather than attributes, which I will add to my standard answer on the question: the very limited data typing available for attributes can be overriden at the whim of the user! Mike Kay 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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