Re: Argh...Entities

Noah_Mendelsohn/CAM/Lotus@lotus.com wrote:
> 
> It's my impression that at least some of the editors share the
> reservations expressed about various aspects of the entity mechanisms, and
> are thus reluctant to perpetuate them as we did in the new design.  It
> does appear that failing to do so would restrict one's ability to convert
> arbitrary DTD's into equivalent schemas, and would entail a change of our
> requirements document along with an associated change in the design.  So
> it's a tradeoff, and I don't think we've finally settled which way to go.
> Your opinions are much appreciated.

Thanks for your message. I do think that the requirements should either be
changed or interpreted as: "allow the expression of the same constraints
as those expressed by DTDs."

As an aside:

taken literally, the current requirements document could lead me to argue
that the code reuse features in the current spec. are not as "expressive"
as those provided by DTDs:

<!ENTITY % myname SYSTEM "http://www.prescod.net/myname">
<!ELEMENT %myname; (%myname;?)>
<!ATTLIST %myname; %myname; CDATA "%myname">

Which might resolve to:

<!ELEMENT paul (paul?)>
<!ATTLIST paul paul CDATA "paul">

Obviously you will employ discretion in the emulation of DTDs so I hope
that that extends to excising some misfeatures.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Diplomatic term: "Emerging Markets"
Translation: Poor countries. The great euphemism of the Asian financial
             meltdown. Investors got much more excited when they thought 
they could invest in up-and-comers than when they heard they could invest 
in the Third World.(Brills Content, Apr. 1999)

Received on Tuesday, 11 May 1999 16:04:04 UTC