White spaces in Dtd.

Tikva Schmidt tikvas at agentsoft.com
Tue Jun 17 08:50:07 BST 1997


C M Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 15 Jun 1997 08:41:35, "Tikva Schmidt" <tikvas at agentsoft.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >   In trying to create a Dtd parser I came across several unclear things
> >for example the usage of white spaces in the dtd.It seems like the
> >grammer has set rules for where space are allowed or needed,and when
> >they can be replaced by an entity refering to space.I also thought the
> >dtd was supposed to be easy to parse.I came across something which
> >is either a mistake or an unclear design.For example the rule for
> >elementdecl is  " '<!ELEMENT' S %Name %S %contentspec S? '>'  "
> >this looks like an entity reference for the %S following the name would
> >have to be directly after the name with no space between them. This
> >makes parsing more dificult for machines and the human eye.Perhaps there
> >is a mistake in defining the meaning of %a,or perhaps the % shouldn't
> >appear before the S...
> >
> >   What should I expect for $S ???
> 
> Thanks for the observation.  If the S following Name is replaced by
> a parameter entity reference, it should *not* be required to come
> immediately after the Name.  Declarations of the form
> 
>   <!ELEMENT foo %xo; (#PCDATA) >
> 
> should be legal.  The intention, in allowing this particular S to be
> parameterized, is to make it possible to parameterize the tag
> omissibility indications needed in most production Full-SGML DTDs
> while being able to use the same DTD source also for XML.  It was
> added very late, and in my haste I made a mistake.  (Tim is wholly
> blameless in this.)
> 
> We should be able to fix this error in the next release of the spec.
> 
> -C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

  Thanks .
 
  This mean the following examples are legal as well.
     <!ELEMENT foo%xo; (#PCDATA) >   
     <!ELEMENT %foo;%xo;%cont; >
  Is that going to change?   
  

           Tikva.

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