Re: Occurrence indicators for #PCDATA

On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, Holger Wahlen wrote:

> Is there any difference between
> 	(#PCDATA),
> 	(#PCDATA)?,
> 	(#PCDATA)+
> and	(#PCDATA)*
> in an element content? I've just recently started to make
> myself familiar with the SGML background of HTML, so my
> picture of #PCDATA may be wrong, but I have the imagination
> that this refers to something of arbitrary length, which
> would mean that all four expressions would be equivalent. On
> the other hand, I have found there are HTML elements (TITLE,
> OPTION, TEXTAREA) that have (#PCDATA)* instead of simply
> (#PCDATA) as their content, which makes me suspect they are
> not quite the same. So, what's the right point of view?


This is a stylistic issue, but the DTD should be consistent
in this regard. Based on Holger's message and other input I
propose to use (#PCDATA) thoughout.

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2521 (office) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Monday, 28 July 1997 08:45:24 UTC