xml-dev - RE: FW: Namespaces and DTDs

[<Marc.McDonald@Design-Intelligence.com>]

I mean representation in the sense of some data structure representing 
the document. Perhaps using a book as the example gave the wrong 
connotation. If it were some kind of purchase order, the application 
that is using the parser would create some representation of the 
information - typically a tree of object representing the elements but 
not required to be so.

I look at it as not only using XML to represent documents that are 
rendered via a style sheet, but also information or data in the more 
general sense which may be delivered a specific application. Moving 
the information from an XML tree in DOM to whatever form the 
application uses for the information represents another 'parser'.

Marc B McDonald
Principal Software Scientist
Design Intelligence, Inc
www.design-intelligence.com


----------
From:  Didier PH Martin [SMTP:martind@netfolder.com]
Sent:  Friday, March 12, 1999 8:38 PM
To:  Marc McDonald; cbullard@hiwaay.net
Cc:  xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Subject:  RE: FW: Namespaces and DTDs

Hi Marc

<YourComment>
It's quite true that you can have XML that does not require validation 
and that this is commonly done. An exception is the defaulting of the 
value of any attributes of elements in a DTD, which has been mentioned 
in another reply.

You can construct a DOM without validation, but the next step ends up 
being a procedural implementation of picking apart the DOM document
tree to construct whatever structure the application using DOM
requires to interpret the document.

I can parse:
  <book title="tale of 2 cities">
    <chapter>
      <para>..<para>
    </chapter>
    <chapter>
        ...
    </chapter>
      ...
  </book>
without a DTD.

But if my application needs to get the information out of the DOM I
need to write code to:
  Create a representation for Book consisting of a title and chapters 
and get book from DOM
  Create a representation for each Chapter and get Chapters from DOM
  Create a representation for each paragraph in a chapter and get
paragraphs from DOM.
Part of this is what is expressed in the DTD. Wouldn't it be better if 
a system were created that used the DTD on the receiving end to create 
the application representation instead of serializing it back into
elements and constructing a new tree?
</YourComment>

<Reply>
a) what do mean by " a representation" is it a rendition object?
</Reply>

Regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@netfolder.com
http://www.netfolder.com


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