Re: questions about entities and entity declarations

On Tue, 24 Sep 96 12:32:07 CDT, paul@arbortext.com (Paul Grosso) wrote:

>> From: Charles@sgmlsource.com (Charles F. Goldfarb)
>>
>> . . .
>> 
>> 2. Forms of reference
>> 
>> XML(SGML) text entities are referenced by a parameter entity reference or
>> a general entity reference.
>> 
>> Data entities, XML(SGML) SUBDOC entities, and XML(SGML) document entities
>> are referenced only by attribute values, not by general entity references. 
>> 
>
>Charles, by this do you mean to say that entity references to SDATA
>entities (which are one kind of data entity) cannot be in #PCDATA and
>can only be the values of attributes with declared value of ENTITY?

Yes. Internal SDATA entities, in this starter proposal, don't exist at all. They
are the kind that typically occur in mixed content. External SDATA entities,
like all other external data entities, are parsed *out of context* and should
only be invoked by an attribute value.

>
>Doesn't this mean that all those various ISO character reference sets
>would be unusable as defined?  Are you suggesting that instead all
>these entities should be redeclared as text entities with replacement
>text that is a character reference (I assume you're suggesting we
>continue to allow character references)?
>

The ISO character entity *sets* are external entities, but the entity
declarations within them declare *internal* SDATA entities. They would have to
be redeclared as you say if we are to exclude internal SDATA entities.

This proposal only dealt with entities. I haven't seen any sentiment to abolish
character references. I would support keeping them. (Obviously, we have to if we
are going to exclude internal SDATA entities.)

--
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 Wednesday, 25 September 1996 20:29:05 UTC