XML complexity, namespaces (was WG)

[David Megginson]

Paul Prescod writes:

 > What's wrong with using ANY for all content models instead of going
 > DTD-less? Then the only thing you need to be careful of is that
 > elements you create have a corresponding type in the DTD.

1. It still doesn't help with attributes.
2. You still have to define all of the element types.
3. You still have to maintain (a) variant DTD(s).

I agree that this is one partial work-around for SGML's insistence on
DTD validation, but it's hard to argue that XML and WebSGML do not
make things much easier (and less expensive) by not forcing you to
jump through these hoops -- in the case of ANY, in particular, you're
no longer doing any real validation (except for my caveats mentioned
above), but you're still incurring cost to satisfy SGML's
validation requirement (to the letter, but not to the spirit).


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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