Re: USES Notations (was part of Update on namespaces)

> From: Martin Bryan <mtbryan@sgml.u-net.com>

> >At 03:51 12/6/97 +1000, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> ><!DOCTYPE x SYSTEM "x.dtd"
> >	SEEALSO 	PUBLIC "IDN//w3.org//NOTATION xml-lang//EN" 
> >			PUBLIC "IDN//w3.org//NOTATION xml-link//EN" 
> >			PUBLIC "IDN//w3.org//NOTATION xml-style//EN"
> >			PUBLIC "IDN//sgmlopen.org/NOTATION CALS table model//EN"  []>
> 
> This serves no purpose as the notations need to be tied to particular
> elements or entities in the file, and this can only be done if they have
> names, i.e. if they are declared as named notations in the internal/external
> subset.

No. The intent is to attach a notation to the document entity, not to the doctype element.
For example, when I have a new empty document, to say "all document instances
must use XML and CALS table conventions."  Under your scheme, how can I do that?

Would you put in #FIXED notation attributes on the attlist declarations for all
element types? You could have a #FIXED attribute on the doctype element,
but then that means that any additional requirements concerning the SGML declaration
and the declarations of element sets are only known after the declarations have been
parsed, which violates the stream parsing nature of SGML that things should be declared
before being used. 

You cannot have additional requirements declared on elements if they apply to text 
occuring the element's occurance.

> >Thus, the DOCTYPE declaration can become more like a full  DTD.  In the TC,
> the SEEALSO
> >(additional requirements) parameter is part of the SGML declaration. I
> think this is wrong, 
> 
> No it isn't! The point is that the public identifiers associated with
> SEEALSO in the SGML declaration should not have a public text class of
> NOTATION, it should be DTD, ELEMENT or the new AF. What SEEALSO is supposed
> to tell you is what Architectural Form sets, or meta-DTD, the document
> conforms to, not what notation it is coded in.

And all that does is make the issue one step removed.  How do architectural forms
let me say "actual columns must agree with the column number attribute in the table
element", or "you cannot use  RCDATA declared content types in your element type
declarations" or "you cannot use TEMP marked sections" or "you can only be using the
XML SGML declaration"?

Additional requirements SEEALSO is intended let you incorporate things that SGML cannot
specify. There is no relationship to architectural forms, except that they are useful 
because they themselves can point to additional requirements that are proper to elements or
attributes.

The additional requirement must be NOTATION. How would you specify the things in Annex L or
the proposed WebSGML TC as architectural forms?  Architectural forms say "this name 
is that name", SEEALSO says "this name has these semantics or these syntactic conventions".


Rick Jelliffe

Received on Thursday, 12 June 1997 02:48:25 UTC