xml-dev - RE: Are there still a lot of people using DTD rather than schema?

["Box, Don" <dbox@develop.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: yimin zhu [mailto:yiminz@timberline.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 3:46 PM
> To: 'xml-dev@lists.xml.org'
> Subject: Are there still a lot of people using DTD rather than schema?
> 
> 
> I recently attended an XML training course and the instructor 
> was teaching
> DTD rather than schema, so I asked him if there were still a 
> lot of people
> using DTD rather than schema. 

Please tell me it wasn't a DevelopMentor course. We try to downplay DTDs as
much as possible.

For a rant in favor of DTDs, check out Murray Altheim's
http://www.doctypes.org.

For a rant against DTDs, check out chapter 4 of Addison Wesley's "Essential
XML beyond markup" (Yes, I'm an author but I think you can grab that chapter
from free somewhere (XML.COM)?). 

In summary, the type model of schemas is much closer to that of the software
you are already writing than DTDs are. For metadata-driven software, schemas
are likely to be much easier to deal with than DTDs, despite a few edge
features.

DB
http://www.develop.com/dbox