- From: Jon Bosak <bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM>
- Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 20:09:22 -0700
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
- CC: bosak@atlantic-83.Eng.Sun.COM
[Charles Goldfarb:] | My point is stronger than that, Jon. The maximally precise DTD is the | one that pops out of the void. If XML wants something different, it | had better spell out the rules for constructing it, rather than | leaving it to the application or stylesheet or browser to do so. David Durand has already pointed out some problems inherent in this notion of "maximally precise". Until you provide a determinate mechanism for generating one and only one maximally precise DTD for an arbitrary instance, prove that the maximally precise DTD is unique for that instance, and prove that the procedure will always produce the maximally precise DTD from any instance, then I don't think that "maximally precise" really means anything. Beyond the formal problems, however, I cannot see any reason to introduce this concept into XML. The whole idea of XML is that any CS graduate can construct a parser for it from the BNF grammar set forth in the specification without knowing anything at all about SGML. This notion of a maximally precise DTD does not appear to me to aid such a person in performing this task. Jon
Received on Sunday, 20 October 1996 23:11:06 UTC