xml-dev - Re: Question About Namespaces and DTDs

[schneur <schneur@usa.net>]

ok
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul W. Abrahams" <abrahams@valinet.com>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Cc: "Joe English" <jenglish@flightlab.com>
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 8:25 PM
Subject: Re: Question About Namespaces and DTDs


> Joe English wrote:
>
> > Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> >
> > > At 12:31 PM 7/25/00 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
> > > > A schema language that's namespace aware is the answer.
> > >
> > > I have to admit that there are still too many days I wish someone had
sat
> > > down and made DTDs namespace aware.  It still doesn't seem that
impossible
> > > a thing to do, though it's probably been too late for a long while.
> >
> > Maybe it would suffice to leave DTDs as they are,
> > and build a namespace-aware DTD-based *validator*.
> >
> > It might work something like this: A document could
> > indicate that a particular namespace URI is bound
> > to a DTD via a processing instruction:
> >
> >     <?xml-schema
> >         href="urn:ndw:doctypes:docbook:3.1.7"
> >         type="application/xml-dtd"
> >     ?>
> >
> > The 'xml-schema' PI target is analogous to the 'xml-stylesheet'
> > target defined in [REC-xml-stylesheet].  The 'type' pseudo-attribute
> > indicates that the schema uses XML DTD notation (not sure what
> > the right MIME type for this is, if any).  The 'href' pseudo-attribute
> > specifies a URI for the schema.
>
> I like the idea of what you're trying to do, but giving particular PIs an
> essential function in XML seems to me the wrong way to go.   I've wondered
> about adding an optional component to an entity declaration that would
supply a
> specified implicit prefix to all unprefixed element names within the
entity.
> That would make it possible to use a single resource (file, URI, etc.) for
a
> DTD that would be reusable with different prefixes.
>
> Paul Abrahams
>
>