Common Structures (was Re: Non-deterministic content model)

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

On 16 Jun 2001 16:23:40 +0800, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> Perhaps we need a "Common Structures" proposal, which would provide the
> union of XML Schemas and RELAX NG, probably using XML Schemas syntax. Like
> RELAX Core, I guess. Kawaguchi-san's article on XML.com is probably a good
> place to start (without endorsing it.) Any volunteers?

I'd suggest it's far too early for a "Common Structures" proposal.  I'd
like to see RELAX NG bloom a bit before we stuff it into W3C XML Schema
syntax, and I'm not honestly sure the approaches can share a syntax
without making life even more complex than it already is.

Perhaps a set of conversion tools - with documentation acknowledging the
limits of such conversions - is a better short-term solution.

I'd be happy to see people formally subset XML Schema along the lines of
that article, but it's not clear that the W3C is keen on such things.
The W3C Document License, among other things, makes it difficult:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-documents-19990405