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Re: Doc vs. Data

• To: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@C...>
• Subject: Re: Doc vs. Data
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 17:24:52 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <5.2.0.9.0.20030606152411.02480808@junk>
• References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030606152411.02480808@junk>
• User-agent: Mutt/1.4.1i

G. Ken Holman scripsit:

> Consider the transformation of ...
> 
>   <para>Does this <emph>really</emph> work?</para>
> 
> ... to ...
> 
>   <p>Does this <b>really</b> work?</para>
> 
> ... in a pull-oriented environment ... I'm not convinced it can be done 
> easily, if at all in a way that could be easily maintained.

Counterargument:  it's easy to do in a text file environment, and
essentially all text file APIs are pull-oriented.

> My hackles were raised when XPath 2 was based on W3C Schema thus requiring 
> me not to look at my document as text but to look at it as typed data ... 

By no means.  If you do not supply type information (via XML Schema or
otherwise) to an XPath 2 implementation, it types all attributes as
anySimpleType and all elements as anyType, which is essentially equivalent
to typelessness.

> I posit the documentation-oriented people in our community, and I include 
> myself, have been disenfranchised by W3C Schema and XPath 2.

Relax.  Things are not as bad as they seem.  What XPath 2 does make
difficult is the way of the XPath implementer, who has to do the whole
standard; but nothing says the user has to use every feature.

> In my own work all of my DTDs have been converted to RELAX-NG and I have 
> *yet* to feel the need in any of my text work to embrace W3C Schema from 
> the perspective of the best way to solve my text processing requirements.

Relaxer and related tools do interpret annotated RELAX NG schemas in
such a way that they represent the needs of data-oriented XML.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan@r...  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Does anybody want any flotsam? / I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam? / I can getsam.
        --Ogden Nash, _No Doctors Today, Thank You_

• References:
  • RE: Doc vs. Data
    • From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@C...>

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