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Subject: Re: [dita] ITEM: Section div in LI
On 6/3/09 1:44 PM, "masalsky_paul@emc.com" <masalsky_paul@emc.com> wrote: > I respect Eliot's opinions, but I must humbly disagree that textual > items in the spec would be an effective way to enforce DITA authoring > rules. You misunderstood what I said: I said that the prose of the spec is the *only complete* way to *define* the rules of DITA. Enforcing those rules is another matter entirely. It is absolutely the case that DTDs (and XSD schemas, and RNG schemas, and another conceivable *declarative* constraint language) are *inherently incapable* of enforcing some important rules that a standard like DITA (or in fact, any document type sufficiently sophisticated to meet the needs of technical documentation or publishers) has. Thus, while it is of course useful to have DTDs or XSD schemas that can enforce as many of the rules as possible, it is not, and has never been, possible to have DTDs or XSDs that can enforce *all of them*. Thus, saying that a particular design is inappropriate *simply because it cannot be enforced by a DTD or schema* is insufficient to rule out that design. That's all I'm saying. At the same time, because, at the most general levels of the design, DITA must avoid unnecessary constraints in order to avoid precluding useful specializations, there will be cases where the most-general models allow combinations that, if used in practice would either be non-sensical or ill-advised. There are any number of standard and non-standard constraint and validation mechanisms at our disposal, not least of which is the OASIS Schematron standard, as well as simple purpose-built validation applications. These can always be applied to enforce rules that DTDs alone cannot enforce. And of course there is always validation by failure.... Or said another way: allowing <bodydiv> in more places may be ill-advised for any number of good reasons. That it allows things that should be illegal but cannot be prevented by DTDs *cannot* be one of those reasons. Cheers, E. ---- Eliot Kimber | Senior Solutions Architect | Really Strategies, Inc. email: ekimber@reallysi.com <mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com> office: 610.631.6770 | cell: 512.554.9368 2570 Boulevard of the Generals | Suite 213 | Audubon, PA 19403 www.reallysi.com <http://www.reallysi.com> | http://blog.reallysi.com <http://blog.reallysi.com> | www.rsuitecms.com <http://www.rsuitecms.com>
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