xml-dev - Re: why distinctions within XHTML?

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Ann Navarro writes:

 > If I'm going to write an XHTML editor (that's worth anything as an
 > *xhtml editor* vs. just a plain text editor), I surely want to know
 > whether the differences in what can occur in a <p> in strict
 > vs. transitional. If my application doesn't know these differences,
 > it can't provide appropriate options or indicate errors
 > appropriately.

I used the PSGML editor to create dozens of XHTML documents that
conformed to the last working draft, and even though there was just
one XHTML Namespace in that draft, my editor still would not let me
insert a <font> element in a strict-flavoured document.

That's why you have a DTD -- the qualified names identify what things
are (an HTML paragraph), and the DTD or other schema identifies how
things are to be arranged.

You can already use the XHTML DTDs with XML editors like PSGML,
XMetaL, and WordPerfect just fine.  We need to hear another argument.

 > If I'm writing an application that will parse XHTML documents, and
 > apparently I only care that <p> is a structural container, then I
 > suppose I don't care about the differences -- but even that
 > reasoning escapes me, in that if I find <p align=center> when we're
 > purporting to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, then there's a problem.

Sure -- that's why you have a DOCTYPE declaration at the top, so that
validating processors can check the HTML against a DTD.

 > Modularization brings it's own namespace issues to the table. More on that
 > when the next draft becomes public. 

That's an even worse problem coming up -- three namespaces is already
bad enough.  By the way, with SAX, XSL, DOM, or any other existing
infrastructure, three Namespaces does not mean three extra lines of
code; it means triple the code for every part that deals with elements
or attributes (three times as many XSL patterns, for example, not
just three more patterns).


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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