Re: binary base64 definition

[Dan Vint <dvint@slip.net>]

You can't use elements this way, but an alternative would be to create a 
NOTATION type and then an external entity of this type - you would copy all
the contents of whatever should be base 64 into this external file, it
would be part of the XML document but it would be outside. Not sure if
DOM has been setup to understand NOTATIONS, but in an SGML world you would
be able to associcate a "processor" with that notation and have it called 
whenever you needed to read or write that format. 

Your DTD might look like the following:

<!DOCTYPE .... [

<!NOTATION base64 SYSTEM "binary base64">
<!ENTITY extfile1 SYSTEM "extfile.b64" NOTATION "base64" >

]>
....
&extfile1;
...

The syntax is probably not exact but you can look up the details.

..dan

> 
> In the DTD, can I specify a type of "binary base64" for an element so that
> when I write to the XML file using DOM, DOM will automatically encode the
> binary data for me without parsing for control characters? If so, I assume
> it will do the reverse when I read that element.
> 
> Can anyone validate my assumption about the DTD data type? Has anyone seen
> an example DTD definition with this in it?
> 
> Thanks much.
> Jerry
>