Re: requiring DTDs [was: RE Deleta est]

lee@sq.com writes:
> Peter@ursus.demon.co.uk (Peter Murray-Rust) wrote:
> > <PROPOSAL>
> > All XML processors must read the DTD(s)
> > </PROPOSAL>
> 
> If you do this, you've lost our good (if grubby) Dirty Perl Hacker.
> 
> If DTDs were in xml syntax, I don't think it would be a big issue,
> since you've got to be able to parse that anyway.
[...]
> As it is, the decision was to use SGML syntax for DTDs, even though
> at the time that desision was made, there seemed no possibility of getting
> SGML changed in any way to support XML.
> 
> But now with every XML processor required to read an internal DTD subset,
> perhaps we've lost the dirty perl hacker anyway.  If every XML processor
> has to cope with
>     <?XML stuff here?>
>     <!Doctype marvin PUBLIC "not found" "marvin.dtd" [
> 	<!Entity % hhg 'INCLUDE'>
> 
> 	<![%hhg;[
> 	    <!Entity % fp 'INCLUDE'>
> 	    <!Entity robot "Marvin">
> 	]>
> 
> 	<!Entity % fp 'IGNORE'>
> 
> 	<![%fp;[
> 	    <!Attlist android
> 		pain (leftside|rightside) #REQUIRED
> 	    >
> 	    <!Entity robot "Robbie">
> 	]>
>     ]>
>     <android pain="leftside">&robot;</android>
> 
> then I think things have got way too complicated.

Well, not if you close your marked sections correctly. I believe one 
can parse for ']]>' (MSC) and ']>' (DSC) and effectively differentiate
between the two. I can't think of where in a DS you can have a ']>'
except as DSC.

> I'd like to see the programming team working on a relational database
> say
>     ah yes, importing and exporting tables, let's allocate a programmer
>     to XML suport for two weeks, that'll be good for marketing and
>     we'll be able to interoperate with zzz and www and...
> 
> and not
>     ah yes, XML, that's a complicated macro processing language,
>     we don't need that, we'll just invent some extra tags and
>     call it HTML/DB.

I think you're making this out to be a much more complicated problem than
it is. This is another one of those little doodads I was able to code up
in HyperCard without too much effort.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim, SGML Grease Monkey                  <altheim[@]eng.sun.com>
Member of Technical Staff, Tools Development & Support
Sun Microsystems, 2550 Garcia Ave., MS UMPK17-102, Menlo Park, CA 94043 USA
         "Give a monkey the tools and he'll build a typewriter."

Received on Thursday, 12 June 1997 21:07:02 UTC