Attribute Question

[James Tauber]

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Blau <fblau at nina.snohomish.wa.gov>


>If I have 3 attributes ("Format", "Usage", and "Loop") that I want every
>element in my DTD to have, is there a way to globally declare them?

No.

>Do subelements inherit the attributes of the parent element?

Not as far as the processor is concerned, although an application might
behave this way.

Common practice is to declare a parameter entity representing that part of
an ATTLIST declaration you want to use globally and then reference that
parameter entity in a separate ATTLIST declaration for each element.

For example:

<!ENTITY % global.atts 'format CDATA #REQUIRED usage CDATA #REQUIRED loop
CDATA #implied'>

<!ATTLIST element1 %global.atts; >
...
<!ATTLIST element2 %global.atts; >
...
<!ATTLIST element3
    <!-- element3 specific atts here -->
    %global.atts; >

James
--
James Tauber / jtauber at jtauber.com      http://www.jtauber.com/
Lecturer and Associate Researcher
Electronic Commerce Network             ( http://www.xmlinfo.com/
Curtin Business School                  ( http://www.xmlsoftware.com/
Perth, Western Australia                ( http://www.schema.net/



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