Re: Images & mouseovers

OK, I do not think that any XML page that will have it's content used by
more than one person or XML based application would even get started without
a schema or DTD.  Every "good" schema should have the following.  It should
be robust and extensible.  If the underlying design is solid, does it matter
if it is rendered with XML or SGML?

Don't most of the server side projects pull from a relational database?


----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Higgs" <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>
To: "David Meadows" <david(at)heroes.force9.co.uk>; "Bryan Bateman"
<batemanb(at)home.com>
Cc: <hwg-xml(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 10:58 PM
Subject: Re: Images & mouseovers


> At 21:41 27/09/00 +0100, David Meadows wrote:
> >My point was: SGML is a very robust, versatile technology. Its central
idea
> >is that all documents *must* have a DTD. The DTD ensures that your
documents
> >are properly structured and that they can correctly interpreted
("rendered",
> >if you like) by your intended audience. Then XML comes along and starts
> >cutting corners, throwing out all element of SGML which are deemed
> >unnecessary. One of the things thrown out is the requirement for a DTD.
This
> >may be convenient for the [lazy] XML writer, but it's not a robust
solution.
>
> Exactly - and one of the advantages of XML is that it can be used for
> NON-robust solutions.
>
> There are some projects for which the time spent developing a DTD would be
> a waste of time (take the case of Kynn's resume).  In such cases adherence
> to a "strict" standard is ludicrous.  Why waste time reverse-engineering a
> DTD once he has decided what form to use?  The next time he updates it, he
> may want to add new sections which would then violate the previous DTD.
>
> An analogous situation would be databases.  To you or I, we'd probably
> associate the term "database" with a fully functional relational database
> management system (akin to valid XML).
>
> However there are a large number of people out there to whom the term
> "database" represents one ginormous table of information, probably stored
> in Excel.  For this large group of people (the non-power users) the
concept
> of "well-formed" will be sufficient.
>
> For the record, I'm a fan of DTD's :-)
>
>
> Chris Higgs <c.higgs(at)landfood.unimelb.edu.au>
> Institute of Land and Food Resources
> University of Melbourne http://www.landfood.unimelb.edu.au
>

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