Re: [xml-dev] Do you need DTD Entities if you have XSLT? (Was: nextml)

["Pete Cordell" <petexmldev@codalogic.com>]

My XSLT isn't great, so I'm wondering, can you use XSLT to do the equivalent 
of DTD entity substitution?

That way power users could get the benefit of entities, without burdening us 
simple types with the DTD complexity.

For example, instead of doing:

    ...
    <!ENTITY author "Pete Cordell">
    ...
    <name>&author;</name>

You could do something like:

    <name>^author;</name>

and allow XSLT to do it.

Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
Interface XML to C++ the easy way using C++ XML
data binding to convert XSD schemas to C++ classes.
Visit http://codalogic.com/lmx/ or http://www.xml2cpp.com
for more info
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Amelia A Lewis" <amyzing@talsever.com>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] nextml


>
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 09:31:06 -0000, Pete Cordell wrote:
>> Looking at this, would it be fair to say that your main concern is
>> trying to fix namespaces, possibly not so much in the XML files
>> themselves, but their usage in things like XPath?
>>
>> Other than that, you look fairly content with XML 1.0 as it is.
>
> Mmmmm.  No, I don't think that's *quite* fair.
>
> It's true that I don't care about making XML more like JSON.  I think
> that my focus is on fixing XML for "authors" (where "author" is broadly
> construed, and may include folks writing programs to consume or
> manipulate XML, not just folks creating XML from scratch).  To my mind,
> XML 1.0 has adequate expressiveness, but some horrible mistakes that
> make it far too difficult to produce and consume.
>
> I do think that fixing the namespace mess is imperative.  I'll also
> reiterate that I'd like to see something that could be algorithmically
> mapped to XML 1.0 + Namespaces without loss; I think that defining that
> sort of specification is achievable in a reasonable time, and the tools
> required could be distributed separately, without requiring a wholesale
> upgrade of existing toolchains--but it's more interesting, to me, than
> a specification constrained to be no more than best practices for 1.0.
>
> I've also reconsidered some things, based on responses.  It appears
> that the general consensus of experts in i18n is that UTF-8 and -16 are
> sufficient--would that mean refusing to accept other encodings
> altogether?  If a *single* encoding were required, then problems with
> inclusion/embedding might go away.
>
> Also, DTD ... okay, removing them makes sense.  Remove them, and the
> problem of a doctype decl appearing as a result of embedding a document
> in another goes away (encoding issues may remain).  Also disappearing:
> notations, parameter entities--that's a lot of complexity gone like
> *snap*.  Unfortunately, general parsed entities also disappear--that's
> not so good, from my perspective (and Liam nailed the reason for it:
> XInclude can't define something that is permitted to appear in an
> attribute value; entity definitions can).  Predefining a larger group
> may help, but doesn't solve things.  Also, with no internal subset,
> security APIs may be forced to support xml:id rather than relying on
> the internal subset to identify attributes of type ID.
>
> Amy!
> -- 
> Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
> Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
> Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
> Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give;
> Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
>                -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume"
>
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