Re: C.9 Forbid & connector?

On Sat, 19 Oct 1996 09:51:31 -0700, Joe English <jenglish@crl.com> wrote:

>In other words, 8879 (for better or worse) places the
>burden of ensuring non-ambiguity on the DTD designer,
>not the parser.

Not exactly. The standard just doesn't require ambiguity checking as a
requirement of every validating parser. We expected that products would
differentiate themselves in this (and other) respects, as indeed they have.

But it is true that, with or without parser assistance, a document type can't
have any ambiguous content models. (Even without start-tag omission, unambiguous
content models are typically easier for a user to understand, and therefore to
determine which element types are allowed at a given juncture.)
--
Charles F. Goldfarb * Information Management Consulting * +1(408)867-5553
           13075 Paramount Drive * Saratoga CA 95070 * USA
  International Standards Editor * ISO 8879 SGML * ISO/IEC 10744 HyTime
 Prentice-Hall Series Editor * CFG Series on Open Information Management
--

Received on Saturday, 19 October 1996 19:42:42 UTC