Re: more on equivalences and round-trip integrity

> III Asynchronous entities
> 
> I think I've heard it proposed that all elements begin and end in the
> same entity, rather than allowing entities the freedom they currently
> have to be asynchronous.  [...]

> I believe Author/Editor users won't have a
> problem either, since I think A/E enforces this rule already.  I don't
> know about other editors.  Perhaps the vendors will say a word?

There are two cases for Author/Editor... editing and validating.  For
editing, A/E requires marked sections and entities to be synchronous:
a MS must begin and end in the same directly-containing element.
A/E does not support file entities for editing at all, so the entire
document must be in a single entity.  For editing, A/E does not support
entities containing markup, whether or not they are synchronous.

For validating, markup contained within entities is checked, and an MS can
probably end in a context different to that in which it began.  I don't
believe file entities are supported, though.  I'll leave it as an exercise to
work out how to get a document with a marked section positioned so as to let
you test this :-)  (hint: use open, not import)

We have no customers (of course) who use asynchronous entities or MSs.
I've once encountered someone who put a number of `beginnings' in
an entity to save typing, e.g.
	<!Entity t "<CHAPTER><TITLE>">
	<!Entity t2 "</TITLE><P>">
	. . .
	&t;this is a title&t2;document start
although I thing this probably counts as an `obfuscatory' use :-), and
the individual expressed a willingness to conform if tools became available
to him so he didn't use windows NOTEPAD (or whatever) any more.

I'd certainly vote for requiring synchronous things in general.

Lee

Received on Wednesday, 18 September 1996 18:16:22 UTC