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RE: Use of "ANY"

• To: "I-Lin Kuo" <ikuoikuo@h...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Use of "ANY"
• From: "W. Hugh Chatfield I.S.P." <hchatfield@u...>
• Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 12:40:28 -0400
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <F220Sqa1pAVxvWVZRwN0001b4a1@h...>

Doesn't an element whose content is defined as ANY mean that this element
could consist of any element defined in this DTD..  not any old element at
all.

In this case you still have to have the presentation elements defined
somewhere in your DTD.

Cheers..Hugh

-----Original Message-----
From: I-Lin Kuo [mailto:ikuoikuo@h...]
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 11:24 AM
To: xml-dev@l...
Subject:  Use of "ANY"


Hi,

I need some advice on the following problem:

My organization has a DTD to which some people would like to add
presentations tags to. There is another camp which opposes this as a bad
idea, but the two have compromised on a set of 9 tags from TEI (Text
Encoding Initiative).

As one of the technical people charged to implement this, I find this a bad
idea, and would like to propose the following alternative solution:

--- Limit the use of presentation tags within a small subset of elements.
For this subset of elements, specify the ELEMENTS contents as ANY instead of
the list of presentation tags.

  I believe this solution has the benefit of allowing the pro-presentation
camp to use whatever tags they want while removing us from the business of
specifying presentation tags altogether. Instead, the decision of what
presentation tags to support is left to the XSLT designer.
  Furthermore, this solution also removes a technical obstacle as we
transition our DTD to XSD, because the TEI specification is a DTD and there
are too many problems validating against a mix of XSD and DTD. Using ANY
removes the need to validate within that element.

  Are there any counter arguments to this approach?

  One major point raised in discussion is that there is a bias against the
use of "ANY". A DTD with "ANY" would be viewed as unfinished, and would be
an obstacle to having our DTD approved by an organization such as OASIS. Is
this true? I am not an experienced schema designer, but it seems like
precluding the use of "ANY" contradicts the extensibility of XML, as I don't
see how user-defined extensions are possible without the use of "ANY"

  Thanks in advance for any insight on this.





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    • From: "I-Lin Kuo" <ikuoikuo@h...>

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