[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: DTD Question: Attributes vs Elements
From: Frank Boumphrey <bckman@i...> >It always struck me that the only valid reason for using an attribute and >not an element is that you can force the writer to add an attribute value, >wheras you cant force them to add element content. >As every one else has pointed out the rest is religion! Lou Burnard, of TEI, has said that a DTD is a theory about a document (one of my favorite thoughts). What a DTD-writer has decided is an attribute or element belongs to this theory. Whether something is an element or attribute reveals, to people downstream, the DTD-writer's concept of how that information relates to the total element. This is very far from religion, but is part of the information modeling. The question shouldn't be "does an attribute node behave differently in a parsed document to an element node?", which is what many people seem to reduce things too. The answer is pretty much "No". The better question is "Why does the DTD writer think that this is an attribute and not a part?" The question is somewhat muddied in that complex attributes (the element has an IDREF to some other elements somewhere else which contain nested elements, which give the "attribute" values) are not as conveniently specified as complex element content. Rick Jelliffe 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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 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...)
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|