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Dave Pawson scripsit:

> I still haven't met a document that says 'why' AF's.
>   They do this or that for you.

They allow you to design documents that use your own element names,
attribute names, and (to a certain extent) structure, while still
making it possible to validate them against one or more so-called
meta-DTDs after running a highly restricted class of transformations
against them.  In this way, a standards-creating group can specify
a meta-DTD instead of a normal DTD (a meta-DTD has a few extensions
that normal DTDs don't allow), and if your document is transformable
into a version that validates against the meta-DTD, it can be
interoperable with very different-looking documents that also validate
against the meta-DTD.

The allowed transformations are:

1) to replace an element name with an attribute value, either specified
or defaulted;

2) to replace an element with its content (either children or character
content or neither);

3) to replace character content with the value of an attribute or
vice versa;

4) to rename attributes.

I'm doing this on the fly and probably omitting some details.
The details of the transformation can be specified with a PI.

-- 
John Cowan                                <jcowan@r...>     
http://www.reutershealth.com              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Yakka foob mog.  Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork.  Chumble spuzz.
    -- Calvin, giving Newton's First Law "in his own words"

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