xml-dev - Re: Question About Namespaces and DTDs

[Rick JELLIFFE <ricko@geotempo.com>]

> Winchel 'Todd' Vincent, III wrote:
 
> >A further thought . . . to be manageable, it seems to me that this would
> >require a registry of prefixes for the particular industry.   Assuming a
> >registry were possible, would namespaces and DTDs mix?
 
It is a good idea for specs to have a preferred prefix. That is because
a name in markup is a name, and a good name is readable.   A string with
"xsl" is a good prefix for an XSL element, for example.

An XML DTD is a limited, fully-resolved structural schema for that
instance. It gives one lexical form for a document that uses elements
from a set of namespaces. In a sense, a DTD is not a schema at all, in
the way some people think of schemas: it is a way of removing constants
to headers and signifying how to interpret certain attribute values as
the ends of links (rather than being a way to constrain relationships
between arbitrary information items, or being a way to map between
storage/access technology and the DOM, or of providing datatyping).

Rick Jelliffe