OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

 


 

   Re: Why doesn't XML have Bag?

[ Lists Home | Date Index | Thread Index ]
  • From: Andrew McNaughton <andrew@squiz.co.nz>
  • To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
  • Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 02:11:48 +1200

> Matt,
> 
> Then let me ask another question - why do DTDs not allow me to specify
> an unordered list of elements?  For example, 
> 
> <!ELEMENT Kitchen RDF:Bag(Sink, Stove, Refrigerator)>
> 
> With this notation I am trying to indicate that an XML document that
> conforms to this DTD must have a <Kitchen> element which has three child
> elements - <Sink>, <Stove>, and <Refrigerator>, and these child elements
> can be in any order.  Isn't this a useful thing?  I have had a number of
> times where I wish that I could do this.

Is it a useful thing?  It might be nice for humans entering the data to be unconstrained in the order in which they can enter data, but if you know exactly what elements must exist within kitchen, then does it limit you to pre-define the order they appear in the document.

I suppose if you want the order to denote something about the position of the elements within your physical kitchen, then you've lost something, but attributes are probably a better solution for storing this information about the elements within your kitchen.

Andrew McNaughton 





-- 
-----------
Andrew McNaughton
andrew@squiz.co.nz
http://www.newsroom.co.nz/



xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)





 

News | XML in Industry | Calendar | XML Registry
Marketplace | Resources | MyXML.org | Sponsors | Privacy Statement

Copyright 2001 XML.org. This site is hosted by OASIS