Element vs. mixed content (Was Re: RS/RE, again (sorry))

gtn@ebt.com (Gavin Nicol) wrote:
> >elm@arbortext.com (?):
> >Somehow, the element-vs.-mixed distinction needs to be made
> >in cases where it's critical for rendering or other processing.  Where is
> >the right place to make the distinction, if there's no DTD?  Is is the
> >stylesheet?  If so, are there any technical barriers to doing this?
>
> I'd like to hear from people the cases that they can think of
> where the distinction is truly necessary.


The only case I can think of is an application that uses
HyTime or HyTime-like addresses for hyperlinks.  In order
for treeloc, pathloc, and most of the relloc forms to work,
the application has to know whether a sequence of syntactic
whitespace should be counted as a pseudo-element node or ignored.

Note that TEI-style XPTRs do not have this problem, so they
could be used instead of the HyTime addressing forms.

Another possible solution is to specify that SSEP nodes are
included in the XML grove plan.  DTD-less parsers would create
PELEMENT nodes in a few places where DTD-aware ones would create
SSEP nodes, but at least they would still count the same number
of nodes.


--Joe English

  jenglish@crl.com

Received on Thursday, 12 December 1996 13:42:02 UTC