Re: external dtd subset content

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 13 Dec 1997 00:15:10

At 12:34 12/12/97 +0100, james anderson wrote:
>we're trying to understand the necessary form for the external dtd
>subset.
>in particular two questions have arisen.
>
>1? since the external subset contains markup declarations only, it
>would appear that it establishes no constraint on the root element. is
>it legitimate to use the same dtd for various xml documents, each with a
>different root element?

Good point! I have never really understood why it's necessary to have
consistency between the root element and the doctypedeclName. For example
If I am authoring HTML 2.0 (assume there is an official XML DTD) and I write:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE P SYSTEM "html20.dtd">
<P>This is a para</P>

that is presumably valid, but:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM "html20.dtd">
<P>This is a para</P>

is invalid. Is this what the WG intends? If so, what's the rationale?

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
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