Feeler for SML (Simple Markup Language)

[G. Ken Holman]

At 99/11/11 12:30 -0500, Betty L. Harvey wrote:
>         Just a couple of comments on recent posts on external parsed
>entities and Unique ID's:
>
>Eliot - I never knew you thought parsed entities were 'evil'.  I knew
>         you didn't particularly like them but the 'Darth Vader of XML'
>         |-).  I also agree with you that the 'valueref' of HyTime would
>         be extremely useful - but XLink should do the job.
>
>Like, Ken, I have found external entities to be really useful in creating
>reusable components.

Actually, I've been trying to explain that I don't use them in creating 
*reusable* components, but merely to fragment large works into manageable 
pieces (manageable for me, not my tools).

Indeed, problems arise when trying to use them as reusable components 
because they aren't designed richly enough to support that well.

When I've needed reusability I've done so at a semantic level, not a 
syntactic level.  That was the reference I made to needing to take one 
lesson from another presentation to include in a given presentation ... I 
refer to the lesson by ID and the other presentation by URI and my 
*production* system (built with XSLT applying concepts of applicability and 
effectivity) brings the two together ... not my authoring system or XML 
processor.

As a result of personal experience trying to do so, I now don't counsel 
external parsed entities be used as reusable fragments.

I hope this detail helps.

.......... Ken


--
G. Ken Holman                    mailto:gkholman at CraneSoftwrights.com
Crane Softwrights Ltd.             http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/
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Web site: XSL/XML/DSSSL/SGML services, training, libraries, products.
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-                            2000-02-27/28, 2000-05-11/12, 2000-05-15


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