- From: Charles F. Goldfarb <Charles@SGMLsource.com>
- Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 03:37:06 GMT
- To: James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>
- Cc: Michael Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@UICVM.UIC.EDU>, W3C SGML Working Group <w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org>
On Thu, 24 Oct 1996 21:32:46 +0000, James Clark <jjc@jclark.com> wrote:
>At 15:23 24/10/96 CDT, Michael Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
>
>>>It would be easier to make this work if we disallowed references to
>>>external text entities in attribute values, but hopefully people can
>>>live without those.
>>
>>Er, I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but doesn't clause 7.9.4.2
>>(p. 335 of Handbook) restrict ENTITY/ENTITIES attributes to
>>data and SUBDOC entities? I.e. isn't your conditional already met?
>
>I'm talking about *references*; for example,
>
> <!entity e system "e.sgm">
>
> <foo a1="&e;">
Maybe that's the problem.
In order for an external SGML entity to be ignored safely by the parser, it has
to be a document entity (or subdoc, which for our purposes is the same thing).
Therefore, if we restrict external SGML/XML entities to being referenced from
attribute values, we can have reusable objects (as Eliot has pointed out) and we
don't have to redefine the meaning of an entity reference.
<p>As is shown in the following text:<quoteref entity=ent1> ...</p>
Of course, "quoteref" is really a typed hyperlink, as is any "entity reference"
that a parser can safely ignore.
My conclusion: drop the optional entity references. We'll get them back in a
robust and fully conforming form when we add hyperlinking.
--
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 Thursday, 24 October 1996 23:37:01 UTC