xml-dev - Re: Which elements can be root elements?

[Andrew n marshall <amarshal@zig.usc.edu>]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Paul Grosso wrote:
> At 09:49 2000 06 23 -0700, Andrew n marshall wrote:
> >I can't seem to determine how an XML DTD defines which elements can be
> >root elements.  
   . . . 
> > Am I missing something?
> 
> Not really, you're just not believing what you're seeing.

I am surprised because it means that I cannot define a DTD that requires
every document to include a particular piece of information, for example:
  <!ELEMENT mydoc (head,body) >
In the above case, a document author could always write a document
directly to body.  At the sacrifice of separation, I suppose you could
write:
  <!ELEMENT mydoc (head, (%body.elements;)+) >
but that still doesn't mean someone won't write a document with any other
sub-body element as a document element.

<thinking-outloud>
I suppose you could say that is it left to be specifified above the level
of DTD, but that would mean that validation to the DTD is an incomplete
validation of the document.  Well, I guess that is true anyway since
neither #CDATA nor #PCDATA format cannot be checked.  Nevertheless, it
still seems weird to me.
</thinking-outloud>

Slightly related:
  Does XML provide a embed another entire document into another document?  
For example, if I wrote a DocBook article as a complete document including
the doctype declaration, my understanding is that it could not be included
into a higher level book document as a external entity.  Is there a good
way of allowing both a book document and an article docuement without
breaking it into three files (article element, article docuemnt, and book
document)?


Anm


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