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

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

 


 

   Re: New schema spec

[ Lists Home | Date Index | Thread Index ]
  • From: Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>
  • To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
  • Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 01:47:34 -0500

roddey@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> Well, its kind of a practical matter. From a support perspective (kind o'
> important to a company our size) proving that the content model is ambiguous
> means never have to say you're sorry, or at least have to say you're sorry less
> often. 

My question is: under what circumstances does an ambiguous content model
cause a problem?

<!ELEMENT ABC (DEF?,DEF)>

Okay, so this is ambiguous according to the XML/SGML definition of
ambiguous. What's the problem? It matches the same thing as DEF, DEF?

<!ELEMENT ABC (DEF|DEF)>

This is ambiguous according to the more widely accepted definition. I
still don't see a problem. It matches the same thing as DEF.

I think that your concern about ambiguity comes from a background in
context free grammars where it is a big problem. In XML, every element is
explicitly separated from every other one with tags so ambiguity is not a
problem.

-- 
 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)

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