RE: And the DTD says, "I'm NOT dead yet!!"

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Inappropriate isn't the question.  It is, **what does that mean?**  

We have a non-normative DTD that is used in that language as a gate to 
whether or not a schema is valid with one exception.   That is odd on the
face of it. 

The official is Dan Connoly and the article is
http://xhtml.waptechinfo.com/extxhtml/

"The following quote shows the heart of the matter:-
'My experience leads me to believe that parts of XML are solid architectural
inrfastructure for the long term: tags and attributes, and namespaces. But
other parts of it are there to manage the transition from the existing
software base: DTDs, entities, processing instructions, and I don't
recommend investing them unless you are constrained by existing software
somehow.' - Dan Connolly,
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2000Aug/0052.html.

In other words, elements, attributes and namespaces are here to stay,
whereas DTDs, entities and PIs are transitional, and are on the way out.

This is a very strong statement by a W3C member, because because it implies
that the usage of DTDs is pointless, which, in fairness, is completely
correct. However, a note of caution here: Mr. Connolly did not mean that you
abandon DTDs for XHTML 1.0 documents now! He simply meant that they will be
discarded of it the future, when XHTML no longer requires them. They can be
discarded currently, but note that XML Schemas are best used when mixing
vocabularies."

Huh?

Clarity.  Enough "minimum victory" visions.  
If the W3C can get rid of DTDs, do it.  Otherwise, 
they are playing a formal role in the 
definitions of application languages of 
which XML Schema is one.  

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk [mailto:ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk]
Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 5:48 AM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: And the DTD says, "I'm NOT dead yet!!"


"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> writes:

<snip/>, wrt XML Schema

> Elsewhere
> 
> "Although this DTD is non-normative, any XML document which is not valid
per
> this DTD, given redefinitions in its internal subset of the 'p' and 's'
> parameter entities below appropriate to its namespace declaration of the
XML
> Schema namespace, is almost certainly not a valid schema document, with
the
> exception of documents with multiple namespace prefixes for the XML Schema
> namespace itself"
> 
> Having just read another round of "DTDs are Dead and 
> Deserve to Be" in an article prominently quoting 
> a W3C official who is in charge of architectures, 
> why is that there?

1) Just what is it that you think is inappropriate about the above?
2) What 'W3C official' and what article?

ht
-- 
  Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
          W3C Fellow 1999--2001, part-time member of W3C Team
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