Re: Should ANY in WebDAV DTD be Mixed

On 23 Jul 98, at 18:51, Jim Davis wrote:

> The elements owner, prop, and resourcetype are declared  ANY.  The XML
> spec section 3.2 says that ANY means "any declared element type", but as I
> understand this, this would exclude character data from appearing in the
> element.  I think at least the first two should be declared to be Mixed
> instead.

ANY does include #PCDATA (what is termed character data in the 
XML spec). The difference between ANY and mixed content is that 
ANY allows any element that is declared in the DTD to turn up as 
content (along with the character data), while with mixed content 
you still have to specify which elements are allowed as content 
(along with the character data). Thus this is only really an issue if 
you want to validate the document, or use the DTD as a guide to 
which elements are allowed where; if you never want to validate and 
any element is always allowed anywhere then mixed content and 
ANY are essentially equivalent.

I agree that the XML spec could be a little clearer on this.

cheers,


Lauren

Received on Thursday, 23 July 1998 23:41:48 UTC