Re: XSchema Spec - XSchema Element (Sections 2.0 and 2.1), Draft 4

Ron Bourret (rbourret@dvs1.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de)
Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:43:52 +0200

> Major Question: Do we want Attribute declarations allowed outside of element
> declarations? If yes, we need to do that here. This will be fairly minor
> surgery; the AttDef element will also need a new attribute for its parent
> element. The XML 1.0 spec doesn't have any such production - it just uses
> Name.

I vote yes. There are two reasons, both for user convenience. First, it allows
multiple attribute declarations for the same element; in this case, the Element
attribute of the AttList element points to the relevant ElementDecl. Second, it
is a convenient shorthand for an attribute applying to all elements; in this
case, the Element attribute of the AttList element is omitted.

> 2.1 The XSchema Element
>
> [snip]
>
> The XSC:XSchema element contains other elements describing the XSchema and
> building a schema. These elements are described in later sections of this
> specification. The XSC:XSchema element may also contain other XSC:XSchema
> elements nested inside of it.

I think it would be useful to explain further why an XSchema might be nested
under another XSchema. In my mind, the major reason is reusability -- this
structure means that the contents of two XSchemas can simply be placed inside
the contents of a third XSchema.