xml-dev - Re: various issues

[David Megginson <dmeggins@uottawa.ca>]

Peter Newcomb writes:

 > - the name of the meta-DTD entity (REQUIRED for validation)

XML could work around this problem by specifying that the meta-DTD
entity have the same name as the notation (and as the base
architecture itself).

 > - whether or not to automatically map element types to element forms
 >   of the same name (default: perform automatic mapping)

This is an important one -- I rarely use the default value here,
because automatic mapping will often cause conflicts with small
architectures embedded in complex document types.

 > I would very much like to be able to use the SGML architecture
 > mechanism with XML, but XML's lack of data attributes makes it
 > impossible to do so, except in the simplest of cases.  (And even in
 > those cases we cannot prove architectural validity for lack of a
 > meta-DTD entity name.)  

No following the scheme in annex 1, but we could provide validation
using the convention I mentioned above.

 > Either we need data attributes in XML, or a different architecture
 > binding mechanism needs to be devised.  My personal opinion is that
 > the former would be easier, and more generally useful, but I have
 > to admit to a tendency to the more general and therefore less
 > easily implementable.

It would not be hard to implement data-attribute support in XML, but
the committee might not be thrilled with the idea -- it will probably
seem too much like creeping featurism.  I imagine that they will
probably end up using processing instructions instead of data
attributes.  I agree with Peter in preferring data attributes.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117@freenet.carleton.ca
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins@microstar.com
University of Ottawa            dmeggins@uottawa.ca
        http://www.uottawa.ca/~dmeggins

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