xml-dev - Re: Argh...Entities

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

John Cowan wrote:
> 
> I remain unreconstructed.
> 
> If we are to have validatable ENTITY/ENTITIES attributes, then
> we must have unparsed entity declarations as well.  Either
> lose both or keep both, say I.

First:

Well, I am perfectly happy to lose ENTITY/ENTITIES and while we're at it
ID/IDREF. URLs and XPointers can do both jobs better. Let's keep our
layers clean and separate!

Second:

Even so, I don't follow your argument. The schema needs to validate that
there is a unparsed entity with a particular name. Why does the
declaration have to be done in the schema?

It makes perfect sense to me that a *document* should declare what
external resources it needs (through a URL or entity declaration) and that
the *schema* would verify that an element that is supposed to reference a
resource actually does (whether through a URL or entity).

Your argument seems analgous to arguing that IDs should indirect through
an "ID object" in the schema. Entities and IDs are a type of object that
are tied to a document. Constraints on them apply to a class of documents.
The former should go in a document and the latter in a schema.

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

And so, in one of history's little ironies, the global triumph of bad
software in the age of the PC was reversed by a surprising combination
of forces: the social transformation initiated by the network, a
long-discarded European theory of political economy, and a small band
of programmers throughout the world mobilized by a single simple idea. 
 - http://old.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

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