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Good luck getting anyone in the W3C to consider reopening the DTD syntax. I
think there's more support for dropping DTDs alltogether.
One trick that people have used for ages to indicate data types in DTDs is
through parameter entities.
<!ENTITY % integer "CDATA" >
<!ENTITY % uri "CDATA" >
<!ATTLIST foo
bar %integer; #IMPLIED
href %uri; #IMPLIED>
This works great for human documentation, but is not especially machine
processable.
I wonder if it's worth more thought to try and bless a way of doing this, to
provide more meaning to attributes?
-Wayne Steele
>From: "Keith W. Boone" <keith@woc.org>
>Reply-To: <keith@woc.org>
>To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
>Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Rethinking namespaces, attribute remapping
>Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 09:07:24 -0400
>
>It seems from all the various postings on XLink/HLink, et cetera, that one
>of the real problems of XML 1.X is a missing data type, the pointer. If
>the
>various attributes could have been declared as:
>
><!ATTLIST img
> src PTR #REQUIRED
> :
> .
> >
>
><!ATTLIST a
> href PTR #IMPLIED
> :
> .
> >
>
>Then we would have had a way to identify links [anything with the type
>PTR],
>regardless of the name of the attribute. So if want to correct the
>HLink/XLink fiasco, why not add a type of attributes that indicates that it
>is a pointer. We might event use the notation mechanism so that there can
>be a way to identify validation constraints on pointers, without requiring
>predeclaration of every pointer in an external entity:
>
>Thus:
><!NOTATION URI PUBLIC "some agreed upon string for href-style URIs" >
><!NOTATION XPointer PUBLIC "some agreed upon string for XPointer URIs" >
>
>Would declare "Attribute types"
>
>which could then be used like:
><!ATTLIST a
> href NOTATION XPointer #IMPLIED
> >
>
><!ATTLIST img
> src NOTATION URI #IMPLIED
> >
>
>So anyway, if we [as Tonto once said -- We who, Kimosabe?] end up
>refactoring XML, I think that something like this should be considered. It
>seems to eliminate a lot of the trouble posed by links today, without a lot
>of new syntax, and no colons necessary [for those Averse Religiously to
>such
>devices].
>
> Keith
>
>
>Engineering is what happens when science and
>mathematics meet politics. Products are what
>happens when all three meet reality.
>
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