Re: xxxML on top of, embedded in XML

At 30/04/98 10:35 AM , Richard Cohn wrote:

>1. Suggestions for specification of a DOM for XML applications such as PGML
>and MathML. Does the working group expect that XML applications use the
>generic XML DOM specification or a specialization? My perhaps naive take is
>that the HTML DOM specification is one example of a specialization in that
>classes are defined that correspond to particular HTML elements and that
>these classes provide direct access to most element attributes. 

I would expect that specializations for particular DTDs would either (as
for HTML)
use the Core DOM as a base, or layer on top of the XML DOM if some
XML-specific
features such as entities are required. We should probably add some words 
explaining how we expect this to work to the specification.

>My current
>thinking is to leave the Document object as is, but to subclass Element.
>All document-wide but PGML-specific info would be tied to the root element.
>This is different from the HTML DOM but seems more general and more
>interoperable.

The latest thinking, which has not yet been put into a public draft, is to
have HTMLDocument and XMLDocument. We do expect application-specific
stuff to be tied to the Document, but I guess this isn't strictly necessary.

>2. Supposing the answer to 1 is that a specialized DOM for PGML and other
>XML applications is expected, has thought been given to how to integrate
>multiple DOMs? 

Not yet, but it's an interesting question. We have talked a little about it
in light
of embedding XML in HTML, but probably not enough.

>It seems that MathML or PGML embedded in a more general XML
>document would be considered a DocumentFragment. 

Another interesting idea that we need to think about.

>This all should 'just
>work', but as the XML people have found with namespaces, there can be lots
>of interesting details to work out.

True. Thanks for bringing these questions up.

cheers,

 
Lauren

Received on Thursday, 30 April 1998 13:59:42 UTC