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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XML and (K)Office
James Robertson writes:
[on using Namespaces in spreadsheet formats]
> It:
>
> * Breaks validation. We are no longer able to ensure that the
> files we are reading/creating are correct and useful.
DTD validation cannot guarantee that a file is correct or useful; it
can only guarantee that it matches a few BNF-like productions (that's
helpful in itself because it allows some code simplication, but not as
much as some people let on). DTDs are great for guided authoring, but
that's a different area.
Furthermore, Namespaces itself doesn't break DTD validation -- it's a
different layer. The possibility of receiving unexpected information
does break validation, but it does so with or without namespaces; with
namespaces, at least, you can clearly distinguish what's been added.
> * Still has the variations between applications, so that a reader
> of a given format still needs to know 100% about what is that
> format.
Not at all -- it can use what it understands and apply simple rules to
the rest (ignore it as in RDF, skip to the top level and process the
children, etc.).
> Without the rigour of a DTD, we've got nothing.
DTDs may be rigorous or lax, depending on the designer. Here's a DTD
for spreadsheets:
<!ELEMENT spreadsheet (#PCDATA)>
Just dump in the comma-delimited file, and escape any XML delimiters.
Now you have a DTD, and you still have nothing.
> Particularly since this data may well live long, and is not
> some transient "sent over the web" data.
That means that the format should be well-documented and validatable;
DTDs can help (and it's nice that they work with off-the-shelf tools),
but they're not worth much by themselves.
> How will future users make sense of the format without
> a DTD?
I've written dozens (hundreds?) of DTDs and a book on them, so I'm
quite comfortable saying that a DTD does not guarantee that users can
make sense of a format. It is helpful in many ways, but good
documentation, examples, sample code, etc. are at least as important.
Would you like to code in C++ based only on the BNF for the language?
Of course.
Is it possible to code in C++ without ever having seen the BNF (or
whatever they use) in the ANSI spec? Thousands do, some well and some
poorly.
That said, I think that DTDs are wonderfully useful and will be around
for a long time -- I doubt that any other schema standards that come
out will be nearly so light-weight.
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson david@m...
http://www.megginson.com/
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