Modified DTDDeclHandler

Bill la Forge b.laforge at jxml.com
Fri Mar 26 17:50:15 GMT 1999


From: Ronald Bourret <rbourret at ito.tu-darmstadt.de>
>Is it worth distinguishing between elements that can only contain PCDATA 
>and elements that can contain both PCDATA and subelements?  I realize that 
>the XML spec doesn't have separate terms for these, but in real life they 
>are very different.  A PCDATA-only element is very close to an attribute, 
>while an element containg PCDATA and elements is a very different beast 
>altogether.


One advantage of not making the distinction is that you subsequently have a greater
freedom to qualify the data held by an element by adding child elements--one of the
advantages of content over attributes.

As an programmer, I agree with you. I'd like the distinction. But when I think about how
an application might mature with time, I'd rather the implementation not make that
distinction!

Bill



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