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Subject: RE: [dita] DITA 1.1 issue 20: Extensible metadata attributes




From: "Paul Grosso" <pgrosso@arbortext.com>
To: "Paul Prescod" <paul.prescod@blastradius.com>,"Christopher Wong" <cwong@idiominc.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 10:44:32 -0400









True, but I didn't use the word 
"validator".
 
It is true that the XML standard requires that all 
attributes be
declared in the DTD for the document to be "valid" (in 
the
technical XML 1.0 sense).
 
However, a document with a DTD that declares most 
elements
and attributes but doesn't declare some (namespaced) 
attributes
is still perfectly fine well-formed XML that should work as 
such
in all XML tools, and there are various tools that do read 
the DTD
without validating.
 
The fact that Epic does what one might call "partial 
validation"
on such a document is an extra beyond what the XML 
spec
discusses, but that doesn't change the fact 
that any XML tool 
should be able to handle such well-formed 
XML.
 
paul



  

  

  From: Paul Prescod 
  [mailto:paul.prescod@blastradius.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 07 June, 2005 
  6:45
To: Paul Grosso; Christopher Wong
Cc: DITA TC 
  list
Subject: RE: [dita] DITA 1.1 issue 20: Extensible metadata 
  attributes


  

  
Using namespaced attributes seems like a good idea but I do not 
  think that anyone should depend on validators ignoring them. Just like new 
  elements, I think that you should add new attributes to your DTD. I'm 
  pretty sure that the XML standard requires it.


  

    

    

    From: Paul Grosso 
    [mailto:pgrosso@arbortext.com]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 4:25 
    PM
To: Christopher Wong
Cc: DITA TC 
    list
Subject: RE: [dita] DITA 1.1 issue 20: Extensible metadata 
    attributes


    

    
Epic handles both DTDs and XML Schemas. When using a 
    DTD,
    
any prefixed (namespaced) attribute not declared in the 
    DTD is
    
allowed. 
    
 
    
Namespacing attributes is an easy way to allow 
    arbitrary attributes
    
to be added without having to modify the DTD or schema 
    and, at
    
the same time, to make it easy to recognize and provide 
    special
    
processing for a certain set of attributes.
    
 
    
paul


      

      

      From: Christopher Wong 
      [mailto:cwong@idiominc.com]
Sent: Friday, 03 June, 2005 
      9:00
To: Paul Grosso
Cc: DITA TC 
      list
Subject: Re: [dita] DITA 1.1 issue 20: Extensible metadata 
      attributes


      
Isn't Epic's DITA support still DTD-based? How would 
      namespacing extensions to %select-atts; help in 
      DTD-land?

Chris

Paul Grosso wrote: 
      
I haven't thought a lot about this yet, but I was having
a discussion with some of our developers today who also
felt the need for extensible metadata attributes, and 
they felt the right way to do it was to have a separate
namespace for metadata attributes.  

Then the DITA schema could allow any attribute in
that namespace on any element, so it would be easy 
to add "profiling" attributes or other metadata.

paul 

  
        
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Wong [mailto:cwong@idiominc.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 01 June, 2005 17:15
To: DITA TC list
Subject: [dita] DITA 1.1 issue 20: Extensible metadata attributes

Could I get an idea from our XML gurus how this could be 
achieved in a 
compatible manner? The issues list does not quite have a lot 
of details.