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RE: XML and (K)Office

• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• To: James Robertson <jamesr@s...>, "XML Developers' List" <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 09:52:11 -0800

At 09:20 AM 3/26/99 +1000, James Robertson wrote:
>Without the rigour of a DTD, we've got nothing.

This sentiment is not universally shared.  While DTDs are extremely
useful and should be constructed as (a small) part of any serious
language-design effort, they are in some cases unnecessary (for 
validation, full-text indexing, and lots of other things) and in
other cases insufficient - DTD validation never comes close
to real business-logic validation.  I am near-schizophrenic these days,
running around telling people that yes, they should use DTDs, and
simultaneously warning them that there are situations where they
fail to be either necessary or sufficient; the kind of mystico-
religious attitude above does not help.

>How will future users make sense of the format without
>a DTD?

And what, pray tell, part of a DTD helps you "make sense" of a
format? -Tim


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