Questions about processing X*L

[David LeBlanc]

I have often thought that an important use of dtds (or schemas etc.) would
be/could be to include processing information about the documents that
conform to them. 

What I mean is that an element declaration would have an attribute of type
(for example) "script" that would contain code that the receiving processor
(i.e. browser) could use to process the following document(s) in whatever
way that was desired, not just for stylistic/presentation purposes. I
actually thought that was why XSL included the script/ecmascript construct
in the first place.

This might imply a definition cache as well where the latest "document
definition" (however specified) would be kept.

Another question: is it possible, using the existing standards, for a dtd
or document to infer the existance of more then one document definition? It
would be interesting to create families/hierarchies of document definitions
usable for different purposes (perhaps through an inheritance mechanism?).
Thus, I could have a root document definition "MyDocDef" and derived
document definitions "MyDocDef-Process", "MydocDef-Transform-HTML"
(implying a root "MyDocDef-Transform" rooted on "MyDocDef") and
"MyDocDef-Style". (Maybe architectural forms is an approach to this?)

Sorry if i'm reinventing the wheel here...

Thoughts or comments anyone?

Sincerely,

Dave LeBlanc

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