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ht@c... (Henry S. Thompson) writes:
> Maybe I was overly influenced by the fact that my first exposure to
> pointy brackets was in the context of SGML, but I think validation is
> pretty fundamental.
I don't think that anyone is arguing against the usefulness of
validation -- Tim's point is DTDs and other formal schemas alone
supply only a small subset the validation necessary for any
real-world information exchange.
> A DTD is like a contract, it helps both clients and service
> providers to maintain a satisfactory working relationship.
It's a very simply contract, though; consider the following DTD:
<!ELEMENT song (title, composer)>
<!ELEMENT title (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT composer (#PCDATA)>
Here's a document that's valid according to that DTD, and that doesn't
fiddle with the DTD in its internal subset:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE song SYSTEM "song.dtd">
<song>
<title>David Bowie</title>
<composer>Let's Dance</composer>
</song>
As Eliot, Tim, and I have all mentioned (in different contexts), the
primary contract *has* to be the human readable documentation, even
though the DTD is useful for detecting a certain subset of problems.
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson david@m...
http://www.megginson.com/
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