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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The triples datamodel -- was Re: Semantic Web pe
 At 10:52 AM +0200 6/6/04, Henrik Martensson wrote: >Using the XHTML 1.0 doctype declaration constitutes a promise to stick >to XHTML, and not to mix in elements and attributes from namespaces >that have not been declared in the XHTML DTD. Absolutely not! All using the XHTML DTD promises is that the DTD can be found at a certain URL, and used to apply some default attributes values and resolve some entity references. It in no way promises that the document is valid. This is one of two qualitative differences between SGML and XML. In XML validity is optional. It is *not* required. Adding a document type declaration makes no promises that the document is valid. It simply says you might find this DTD to be useful when processing the document. Many developers believe that rigid, conservative (everything not permitted is forbidden) schemas are necessary to produce software. Nothing could be further from the truth. Programming with the expectation that the schema will be followed leads to brittle, inextensible, closed systems that break at the first whiff of change. Robust, flexible software that can handle extensions gracefully begins with the realization that any fixed schema is inadequate for some uses, and that one must be prepared to handle both schemaless and invalid documents. Again, the question one should ask when presented with an XML document is, "Can I extract the information needed to perform my task from this document?" The question should not be, "Does this document adhere to one very precise and constrained format in the universe of all possible formats?" Sometimes the answer, is "I don't know" and the document may need to be kicked to a human for further analysis. In practice, however, most systems encounter a fairly limited number of document formats (though that limited number is normally greater than 1) and these can all be recognized and handled, with occasional fallbacks to people to add support for newly recognized formats. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA 
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