Namespaces and DTDs

[Marc.McDonald at Design-Intelligence.com]

A simple extension to namespaces could have fixed this problem:
1.	Allow a DTD to be optionally specified along with the namespace 
prefix and URI
2.	When an element is prefixed, parse it using the DTD associated with 
the namespace and the given prefix as the default.
3.	If no DTD is associated with the prefix or not validating, do what 
is done now (ensure element is well-formed).

Your DTDs would not need to be changed, you would just have to 
indicate which HEAD (for example) is desired in the content and add 
associated DTD urls to the namespace declarations.

Marc B McDonald
Principal Software Scientist
Design Intelligence, Inc
www.design-intelligence.com


----------
From:  Ronald Bourret [SMTP:rbourret at ito.tu-darmstadt.de]
Sent:  Tuesday, March 09, 1999 9:02 AM
To:  xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Subject:  RE: Namespaces and DTDs

Richard L. Goerwitz wrote:

> Maybe I misunderstand, but as far as I can see, namespaces won't 
help
> you, either.  Why?  Because even if you can refer to, say, your two 
TITLE
> elements by different prefixes, you'll still have to declare the 
prefixed
> elements in the DTD as if they were atomic element names.
>
> Namespaces, in other words, don't solve your problem.  They may make 
it
> worse, in fact, because you have to know what prefixes you are going 
to
> declare in a given document to be able to rewrite your DTD to work 
with
> that document.
>
> There was a furor two or three months ago on this list about 
namespaces
> breaking validation.  That furor died down when the namespace spec 
became
> an official recommendation (a done deal, in other words).

You are correct.  In today's environment (namespace-unaware parsers 
and no
way to associate prefixes and URIs in the DTD), you must use the same 
prefixes in the DTD and the document for validation to work.  I didn't 
state this because it was stated repeatedly during the aforementioned 
furor, which I sincerely hope this thread won't reignite.

-- Ron Bourret


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