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
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.
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
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.