RE: [xml-dev] Best Practice - beyond schema

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

Is it a goal to create one authoritative document 
that can declare the conditions and constraints for 
all elections it governs, or to create a document 
from which the conditions and constraints for 
any given election locale to declare a governing 
document?

It seems to me that trying to keep all conditions 
and constraints for all election locales in one 
document will become quite cumbersome.  Local rules 
should be declared and owned locally.  I take it that is the 
reason for the include file.  This approach seems 
preferable to XSLT because it is more transparent 
although I suspect XSLT will be more powerful for more 
situations.

A social key for acceptance of these devices will be 
their ready understandability to some informed percentage 
of the electorate (no technology is truly transparent and 
as with any issue depends on some percentage to grasp it 
and explain it to the rest clearly enough that it is 
accepted).  One prefers the easier to explain solution.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com]

Paul Spencer scripsit:

> [...] XML Schema cannot express the constraints required, for example,
> a section of a message that is required if the value of a previous
> element is "yes", but not if it is "no". 

RELAX NG can handle this very neatly: <snip/>

include "person.rnc" {
	locale = "US"

<snip/>

include "ballot.rnc" {
	affiliation = element affiliation {
		"Republican" | "Democrat" |  "Green"
		}
	}