EMBED and validation

[Eve L. Maler]

There is a way to handle this using external text entities.

The DTD for any one document is really made up of two parts (if they both
exist): the external subset and the internal subset.  Most people tend to
think of the external subset "the DTD" and think of the internal subset as
"the place where I supply my own common text, graphics, etc."  However, if
you want to create your own set of text entities and put them in the
internal subsets of only the documents that you own, you've effectively
made a local modification to the DTD.

(There hasn't been a formal way to distinguish between "harmless" and
"harmful" DTD modifications, and of course different people might draw the
line in different places.  In interchange of SGML today, typically it's
acceptable to provide general entity declarations but not element/attribute
declarations; put another way, the "markup model" isn't supposed to be
changed by means of the internal subset.)

	Eve

At 11:22 AM 12/1/97 -0500, Rob McDougall wrote:
>I'm new to XML but this doesn't seem to accomplish what I would be
>looking for as an "include" capability.
>
>Let's say I have a markup language (let's call if RML, "Rob's Markup
>Language"). I create a DTD for it and post it to my public web site.
>All users of RML put the URL for the DTD in the <!DOCTYPE> declaration.
>So far so good?
>
>Now, if one particular user of RML notices that there's a section that's
>common across every one of their RML documents, they might wish to
>seperate it out into a distinct file and insert a link to it.  This
>common piece is not a complete document unto itself so it cannot be
>validated, yet the user may wish to have the documents that include make
>sure that it is valid within the context that it was embedded.  Since
>this particular file is unique to this user and not all RML users, it
>does not belong in the commono DTD.  This would seem to make an external
>text entity undesireable for this case.
>
>Is this correct, or am I missing something?  Is there any other way to
>accomplish this using the current XML/XLL specs?
>
>Rob
>=======================================================
>Rob McDougall            Phone:  (613)751-4800 ext.5232
>JetForm Corporation      Fax:    (613)751-4864                 
>http://www.jetform.com   mailto:rmcdouga at jetform.com
>=======================================================
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From:	Eve L. Maler [SMTP:elm at arbortext.com]
>>Sent:	November 29, 1997 10:09 AM
>>To:	Peter Murray-Rust
>>Cc:	xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
>>Subject:	RE: EMBED and validation
>>
>>
>>I don't think I've seen it explicitly suggested here, so here goes.  If you
>>want to ensure that what's pointed to is real XML, and "belongs" in that
>>location, how about using a plain old external text entity?  With a
>>validating XML processor, you can guarantee that (a) the entity will be
>>expanded in place before it even gets to the application and that (b) it
>>will be validated in context.
>>
>>	Eve
>>
>
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