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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: SGML queries
 That's one. I'll agree that if one is doing a lot of conversion work, it might be best to slip back to SGML and use the power tools. The example you give is interesting in terms of a production flow in and out of DTDs where each DTD describes a state in the production process. In the web industry were better informed, SGML expertise would be one of the things to check when discovering a company and considering it for conversion work. I have done "ugly" conversions, but we did not use that technique. I admit to thinking more in terms of documents with longer lifecycles rather than short, stepped versions. I think the handbook got it right though in saying that techniques such as a fully minimized element are for those who completely understand the contexts of the declarations. Otherwise, as it also says, valid SGML can be produced that does not match the intent of the designer. Since we often design for people who barely bother to understand what the brackets are for, using a fully minimized element seems risky unless one has full control of all the places, people, and processes in which it is used. For a web DTD shared outside a closed system, it seems even riskier. OTOH, the HTMLers used it. It may have worked simply because the tag stackers ignored the DTD in most cases, and when they did bother to validate, the DTD proves so loose as to almost be worthless. That's an interesting rabbit trail in and of itself: how useful has HTML validation and the HTML DTD proven to be other than being a formal description of the tags in the soup? len From: Marcus Carr [mailto:mcarr@a...] Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > *Bonehead elements* might be good. Other than in > the SGML Handbook, I've never seen these used > in practice. You haven't spent enough time around ugly (read "cost effective by coding alone") markup jobs then. I've used omissable start and end tags more times than I could count - the classic situation is for turning something like: <section>Laundry basket <para>The laundry basket has a long and fascinating history... into something like: <section> <title>Laundry basket</title> <para>The laundry basket has a long and fascinating history... It's intuitive, equivalent and less markup. I'm surprised that there's so little enthusiasm for this - I've had markup teams ask for this sort of change to be added to a DTD. Omission is one of the key drivers that has kept us using SGML en route to the delivery of XML data. Normalizers are cheap, markup people aren't. 
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