Proposed Goals, Rev. 2

[Paul Prescod]

Don Park wrote:
> 
> >I prefer to keep the word "document" buried in the acronym because in
> >discussions of SDD verification, it should be reserved to mean the
> >document being verified. Otherwise all confusion will break loose.
> 
> Well, your reasons are understandable but XSD and SDD confuses me still.
> One of the things I did not like about DTD is that it is a document format
> different from XML documents.  Seperating XSD and SDD fuels that confusion.

I understand. I prefer "XSchema" as both the name of the standard and as
the type of document.

> >> 2. Some of the goals are actually benefits of using XML and redundant.
> >
> >Could you comment on which you think are redundant?
> 
> XML documents are easy to parse, manipulate, etc.  I believe goal #4 and
> some of the others state these as goals.

I thought that that was redundant at first, too, but changed my mind.
Being easy to parse and manipulate *as a schema* is maybe different than
just being able to be parsed and manipulated as an XML document. For
example, if we designed the links between elements badly, then it might be
hard to verify documents, even though the schema is still in XML instance
syntax.

Nevertheless, I think that there is only a small chance of these goals
having less than 100% overlap. Now that we seem to be adding one or two
requirements per day, it might make sense to remove it.
 
> >I don' think that there is a clear relationship to be described, at this
> >point. The only thing we know is that there should be a well-defined
> >conversion from SDDs to DTDs.
> 
> I just think it should be made clear whether XSD functional superset,
> equivalent or complement of DTD.

XSchemas are certainly not going to be a functional superset or equivalent
of DTDs. I suppose it makes sense to view them as a complement. They are
supposed to provide a simpler, more consistent syntax for doing most of
the content and attribute verification that DTDs do.

 Paul Prescod  - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

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The promises your boss makes, and the customer's good will 
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