Re: Couldn't XML allow and ignore omitted tag minimization

Tim writes:
>Can you outline a scenario where you'd want to have OMITTAG YES and
still be working with XML? - Tim

Docbook allows tag minimization in the DTD but sets OMITTAG NO in
the sdecl.  Eve and I think that with some effort we could make
an XML-compliant version of Docbook, toward which the formal version
could be made to converge (no sooner than version 5.0 because of our
policy wrt backward-incompatible changes).  If we were eventually
to rid Docbook of stuff XML has ruled out, such as inclusion
exceptions, we'd want it to be usable for SGML and XML.  But for
those users who want to substitute their own sdecl with OMITTAG YES,
we'd want to keep the tag minimization.

I think this is a case where a little bit of ISO formalism can
be swallowed (and in fact it might be easier to explain to DTD-heads
that XML just ignores tag minimization specification than to explain
that it's just like SGML except ...).

We finally allowed tag minimization when it was clear that reliable
tools existed to normalize (thank you, James), and still prefer
OMITTAG NO for interchange.  But some people persist in writing
SGML in vi; for them and other lost souls, tag minimization is 
a boon.

For that matter, HTML may have replaced Rainbow as a descriptive
hub DTD; if the HTML DTD can be XML-compliant as is, that would
be very useful.

Regards
  Terry Allen    Electronic Publishing Consultant    tallen[at]sonic.net
       specializing in Web publishing, SGML, and the DocBook DTD 
                   http://www.sonic.net/~tallen/
  A Davenport Group Sponsor:  http://www.ora.com/davenport/index.html

Received on Sunday, 2 March 1997 19:19:43 UTC