Re: Unplugged & Install-Friendly XML

Richard Tobin (richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)
Fri, 25 Sep 1998 13:40:57 +0100 (BST)


> If one were building a product which used XML to write out
> metadata about things, what is the recommended approach
> to referring to a product-specific DTD in your XML
> document instances given the fact that [...]

You could refer to the DTD by means of a public id which is known to
the application. Other XML processors that don't understand that
public id will use the URL instead.

For example:

<!DOCTYPE mydoc PUBLIC "-//MyCompany//My product//EN"
"http://my.company.com/myproduct.dtd">

Your application would recognise the id "-//MyCompany//My product//EN"
and supply a built-in DTD instead of fetching the URL.

Perhaps someone else could give better guidance on just how to construct
a suitable public id.

-- Richard