Re: Associating DSSSL style sheets with documents

Len Bullard (cbullard@hiwaay.net)
Fri, 14 Mar 1997 14:53:52 -0600

Eve L. Maler wrote:
>
>
> The difference is that, by convention, you're making PI markup available
> that's available to every document and to every *location* in a document if
> necessary, no matter what its DTD (and no matter whether it even has one).
> It just happens to look suspiciously like a start-tag, which may be helpful
> to any software that has to parse the PI string.

By convention? You mean, by application.

An inclusion on root makes an empty element available
to every location. A PI is something every document has to have.
That isn't an improvement. If you use a DOCTYPE and know the DTD,
don't
you get the same effect? XML goes out it's way to load up an
instance just to get around a DTD. I question the utility of that.
We tell them they are being freed of fixed markup, then add a
question mark and say, oh, that's OK, that's XML.

> I don't think links in general should be done this way, but I do believe in
> PIs being used for, uh, instructions to processors.

Ummm... sure. Sort of what links are.

> (In other words, I'm
> not 100% against PIs, as some people are.) In particular, I'm starting to
> get very fond of PIs for anything that has to be specified per entity.

No doubt.

len