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Re: The subsetting has begun

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: The subsetting has begun
• From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
• Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 17:17:45 +1100
• References: <00da01c2ddbd$de3296d0$4bc8a8c0@A...> <5.1.0.14.0.20030226160545.0207fd18@m...> <5.1.0.14.0.20030226160545.0207fd18@m...> <5.1.0.14.0.20030226162932.01e92ac8@m...> <200302262204.h1QM4Rr08409@d...>

From: "Joe English" <jenglish@f...>

> Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> >
> > SGML is more of a DAG, because of CONREF.  Sharing branches
> > is one thing XML gave up.
> 
> Actually, that's not what CONREF does.
> 
> The only significance of attributes with default value
> CONREF is that at most one such attribute may be specified
> in a start-tag, and if one is, the element is not allowed
> to have any content.

The significance of CONREF is in ISO 8879 

"4.57 content reference (attribute): An impliable attribute whose value is 
referenced by the application to generate data content.  NOTE: When an 
element has an explicit content reference, the element's content in the 
document instance must be empty."

The plain name says it: a reference to content: hence the DAG connection. 
That it is the application's job to do the branch sharing is fine: it is the 
application's job to build and present the in-memory structure or stream 
in any case. 

> Attributes with REFID declared value and CONREF default
> value are sometimes used to _encode_ DAGs, but that's purely
> an application convention.  CONREFness and REFIDhood aren't
> even reflected in the ESIS.   

Well, that is something to take up with the designer of ESIS, I guess :-)
Omnimark makes it trivial to assess whether some content is CONREFed,
something like

 ELEMENT x
    ...
     OUTPUT REFERENT zz WHEN 
        CONTENT IS CONREF
    ...

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

• References:
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
  • RE: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

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