Re: Mixed vs. element content (Was Re: RS/RE, again (sorry))

Paul Prescod wrote:
> Is this a valid summary of your proposal:
>
> The spec should require the application to read the DTD for proper
> whitespace handling of element content. Many applications do not care about
> proper whitespace handling and can thus skip the DTD.

Yes.


Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie> wrote:
>
> Surely it should be the other way round: many applications do not
> care about the DTD and can thus skip proper whitespace handling.

I don't follow this line of reasoning...

Applications only care about the DTD if they need information
in it that is not available from the instance alone.  Under my [*]
proposal, the distinction between element content and mixed content
would be one such piece of information.  This is, after all,
how it works in the base language SGML.

[*] I believe that Derek Denny-Brown is proposing the same thing.

Note that in XML there already is information in the DTD
that is not available from the instance (the replacement text
of non-predefined entities -- which DSSSL and HyTime engines
will need, so we're not asking them to do a whole lot more work),
and I'm willing to bet that before we've finished with hyperlinking [**]
there will be even more information in this category (e.g.,
#FIXED attributes and/or architectural declarations).

[**] Speaking of hyperlinking, does anyone have any ideas how
this should be specified?  We probably ought to start thinking
about this...



--Joe English

  jenglish@crl.com

Received on Tuesday, 17 December 1996 13:43:40 UTC