Re: C.14 Enumerations in attribute declarations?

|   C.14 Should XML allow more than one enumerated type (name-group
|   declared value) to contain the same possible value (11.3.3)?

The enumerated type strikes me as an easy-to-use construct that helps
make the act of validation look useful to people; it's natural to use
it in a lot of situations, and the only thing that has been a big
problem with it in SGML is this prohibition against reusing the
values.  I think all the other available declared value parameters for
special lexical types are of less value than this, especially in an
SGML-for-the masses.

I can't see the logic of dropping enumerated types entirely on the
principle that we want to be absolutely compliant with SGML.  Those
who want to retain absolute compliance can write XML DTDs that meet
the SGML rule---this feature of XML would not create a second of new
work for those requiring SGML interoperability.  XML DTDs that do
exploit this feature are pretty easily converted to SGML, by
transforming the lists of enumeration values to NAME.  I doubt if
that's the hardest task we'll be creating for such XML-to-SGML
conversions.

John Lavagnino

Received on Tuesday, 22 October 1996 21:39:51 UTC