Re: XSchema Spec, Sections 2.0 and 2.1 (Draft 1)

John Cowan (cowan@locke.ccil.org)
Mon, 08 Jun 1998 17:27:01 -0400

Chris Maden wrote:

> > No, not at all. There is no XSchema equivalent of parameter
> > entities.
>
> That's unfortunate. We tried to kill them in XML, but couldn't
> because they're so useful. The processing concerns they introduced in
> XML go away if you treat them as ID'd objects and references thereto,
> so there's no reason to avoid them and very good reasons to include
> them. Especially since the syntax is going to be more verbose, the
> gain in reusing pieces is larger.

As stated elsewhere, piece reuse can be achieved with general
entities declared within the (internal subset of) the DTD of the
XSchema document.

That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be interested in defining an
XML-level mechanism for XSchema piece reuse using element/attribute
machinery. The main question there is just what should be reusable.
To my mind, the obvious choices are content models or parts thereof,
and attributes or groups thereof. Do you see anything else that
could usefully be reused?

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)