Experimenting with Namespaces - DTDs?

[Chris Smith]

For those who either are experimenting or considering experimenting
with namespaces - I'm curious how the related DTDs should look.

The following fragment comes from ex.3 of the XML-Namespace WD, a
work-in-progress.

<E:Order>
  <dsig:dsig>
    <E:Manifest>80183589575795589189518915</E:Manifest>
  
My question is simply: what is the definition for "Order" ?

I can see one easy possibility:

  <!ELEMENT Order (SoldTo,SoldOn,Item+)>

However, this doesn't 'allow' the 'dsig:dsig' entry to appear. If you
have a validating parser, this should (?) show up as an error.

An alternative is:

  <!ELEMENT Order ANY>

The problem here is that this is carte blanche to put ... well,
ANYthing in there - even another <Order ...>.

What could you reasonably see a validating parser expecting in order
to allow namespaces (as above) without throwing your entire DTD
structure out the window?

Basically, I want to tell the parser 'here there can be other stuff,
but none of mine'. Occasionally, I may want something more
sophisticated, along the lines of 'here there can be anything that
isn't from my DTD, and in addition these few items from my DTD'. This
would provide for controlled inclusion of 'Manifest' (above) inside
'Order'.

And, ideally, I can provide this info in my DTD **before** I know what
other DTDs are to be namespaced into mine. This means I can't
explicitly include it via <!ELEMENT Order (dsig:dsig, SoldOn, SoldTo,
Item+)>

Any ideas?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Chris Smith                                          <smith at interlog.com>



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