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   Re: [xml-dev] Goodbye to textual applications?

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> > I eschew all the other stuff heaped in there from the SGML days
> > where possible.
>
>Such as?

> macroprocessing - as you yourself highleghted.

>  I'd really love to know about the best alternatives
>to DTDs. Many thanks.

> I think we differ over the semantics of the word "eschew".

Not really.  I just thought that you may know about some 
SGML alternatives to DTD, because you know more about 
SGML than I do, so I asked ... just in case. 

For example, I don't understand what in DTDs is 
'from SGML days' and what is not. I thought that 
everything in DTDs is 'from SGML days'.

> > DTDs are not perfect, there are multiple alternatives, some better than
> > others for document-oriented XML applications.
>
>Well, I don't understand your point then.

> Likewise, I do not understand yours. Sorry.

My point is simple. DTDs should die. Their syntax 
is ugly and inconvenient for processing,  their functionality 
is not enough for the real-life cases. They are almost useless.

Some time ago I've written a program, which took 
a DTD and generated the YACC grammar from it.

Just reading the DTD into the memory was a challenge,
because there was no reasonable API to work with 
DTDs. 

So it starts from the simple question: "Why do DTDs use 
non-XML-ish syntax" ? The next question could be :
"OK, the syntax should be changed... but if changing 
the syntax - why not replace macroprocessing with 
something better?"  

Rgds.Paul.






 

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