RE: DTD's

["Dudley, Mark" <Mark.Dudley@usa.xerox.com>]

Sandra,

There is no question that an XML instance does not *have* to have a DTD
associated with it. That is the whole concept of well-formedness and makes
XML instances more portable and lightweight. It seems to me that, if you
want to limit the number of legitimate tags in the document, the only real
way to do it is to have a schema or DTD associated with it. There are
opportunities to enforce the tags that are allowable by some sort of
convention. 

I find the DTDs that we use invaluable for writing stylesheets and other
code that may be operating on an XML instance. If you open the XML instance
up to include any tag that someone can dream up, you run the risk of
breaking the tools that may require a valid document to be robust.

Mark Dudley

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Sandra Carney [SMTP:scarney@endocardial.com]
	Sent:	Thursday, May 17, 2001 12:43 PM
	To:	xml-dev@lists.xml.org
	Subject:	DTD's

	Hi,
	  We have a question about the necessity of DTD.  There are folks
	  among our developers who postulate that so long as the document
	  is well-formed, we don't need DTD's.  So far, so true.  However,
	  might this pose a quality problem later on especially if you want
	  to limit what are considered legitimate tags in the document?
	Regards,
	Sandra Carney

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