Re: questions about entities and entity declarations

At 09:13 AM 9/24/96 +0100, Martin Bryan wrote:
>At 08:11 AM 24/9/96 +0100, W. Eliot Kimber wrote:
>>At 07:36 PM 9/23/96 CDT, Michael Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
>
>>>* Should XML remove SGML's prohibition on ENTITY attributes for
>>>notations (11.4.1)?
>>
>>Do you mean that XML should *allow* ENTITY attributes for notations (also,
>>IDREF(S) and NOTATION)?  I would say yes, because it only affects the DTD
>>and it's something that will almost certainly be in the revised SGML.
>
>11.4.1 refers to data entities, which are only associated with Entity
>declarations. It does not make sense to allow an entity to reference another
>entity, either directly or via an ID. As the notation of the entity has to
>be specified after the NDATA keyword it does not make sense to have a
>possibly conflicting notation attribute.

There are several cases where it *does* make sense. For example, with
formal system identifiers, I can indicate that one entity is contained by
another entity (container storage manager). Thus, the contained entity
needs to refer to the container entity, which it can do most naturally with
an ENTITY attribute. Who are we to say when it is or isn't meaningful to
relate one entity to another using data attributes.

Another case would be relating a graphic to alternate forms of itself by
refering directly to those entities with data attributes.

Cheers,

E.
--
W. Eliot Kimber (kimber@passage.com) 
Senior SGML Consultant and HyTime Specialist
Passage Systems, Inc., (512)339-1400
10596 N. Tantau Ave., Cupertino, CA 95014-3535 (408) 366-0300, (408)
366-0320 (fax)
2608 Pinewood Terrace, Austin, TX 78757 (512) 339-1400 (fone/fax)
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Received on Tuesday, 24 September 1996 10:36:12 UTC