RE: DTD Confusion

I also agree that DTDs can and should be avoided. Let's not forget that
DTDs originated in an era when most SGML documents were created by
humans. WebDAV clients and servers do not need to deal with DTDs. Any
"invalid" XML within requests or responses indicate (at best) a lack
of conformance to specifications or (at worst) a bug or (unlikely) a
transmission failure.

My clients and servers do not generate internal or external DTDs and
ignore any received DTDs and are still (somehow :) able to discern XML
that is incorrect and then report the correct error codes.

I would even consider removing all DTD-like information from the
draft or at least mark such as non-normative. After all, the lack of
DTD expressiveness reduces their ability to define XML structures
effectively. And removal (or replacement with BNF, XML-Schema, or
equivalent) would (at least) lessen the need for purism arguments or
(at best) reduce ambiguity.

Thanks, Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Stein [mailto:gstein@lyra.org]
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 1:05 PM
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Subject: Re: DTD Confusion


On Sun, Feb 04, 2001 at 02:17:39PM -0500, Geoffrey M. Clemm wrote:
> 
>    There seem to be some confusion as to how DTD work.
> 
> I don't think there is any confusion about how DTD's work,
> but rather a disagreement about the value provided by a DTD.

I "vehemently agree" with Geoff and the rest of his mail. Consider this a
vote for avoiding the additional semantic complexity of bringing DTDs into
the protocol definition and processing.

Received on Wednesday, 7 February 2001 14:52:27 UTC