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RE: Why is there no schema for RSS?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Why is there no schema for RSS?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:22:52 -0500

It isn't that uncommon to start from instances and 
tag sprinkle.   Somewhere in some fashion, someone 
had to document the results.   They could do that 
with samples, which is a weak way, or write a DTD 
which is formal but can have the side effect of freezing 
a design early in a form that looks more authoritative 
than it has to be, or just do the typical table of 
names and descriptions.   I encourage a DTD because it is 
a lot easier to read and understand than trolling 
tediously through long examples looking for patterns 
and exceptions.

Given a very large set, the use of the DTD and parser 
to repeatedly test the set, find exceptions, make changes 
to the DTD or call in the experts to determine if the 
exceptions are significant seems more productive than 
tag sprinkling.

The part that is more troubling to me when sprinkling 
is coming up with naming conventions that are easy to 
read, resource friendly, and which most of the players 
can agree to as useful for all of the processes the data 
will be a part of.

len

From: Tim Bray [mailto:tbray@t...]

Many on this list will find it shocking, but lots of important XML 
dialects don't have any DTDs or schemas.  Particularly in the 
application-glue space.  People email back and forth some examples, they 
cut some code, and then everything's working and they're too busy to go 
back and write a schema.

In fact, I am at this very moment working on a proposal to do some data 
mapping of a big information pool that can generate XML output, they 
just sent us some sample instances, seemed to do the job.

I don't 100% approve of doing it this way, but that doesn't stop people 
doing it, and (at least sometimes) getting good results. -Tim

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