Exchanging RelaxNG XML of the ODF spec to the compact syntax

[Svante Schubert <Svante.Schubert@Sun.COM>]

Hi,

although I had not finished a prototype for the automation to exchange 
the RelaxNG XML of our ODF specification to compact syntax, I would like 
to offer some details, as Lars already started the discussion.

I guess it was Rob a year ago, who came up with the suggestion to 
exchange the RelaxNG XML within the spec by RelaxNG using the compact 
notation.
The advantage would be that the schema is easier to read - as Bruce 
noted - and we would save a lot of space, decreasing the page number of 
the specification.

As neither Rob and I had the time to work on it, we dropped the topic. 
Lately I realized that the exchange can be easily done using XSLT and Trang.

Shall we give it a try? What do you think?

Svante


Lars Oppermann wrote:
> Hi Bruce,
>
> Apropos compact syntax... Although I am currently not really fluent at 
> it - because we use the xml syntax in our spec - It may actually be 
> worth considering migrating the spec to use the compact syntax, as it 
> is indeed much more palatable. I don't think that this would impact 
> our nice automatic extraction process, which allows us to have a 
> common document for the schema and the specification text. After all, 
> converting between the two representations is an isomorphism.
>
> What do others think about this?
>
> Bests,
> Lars
>
> Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
>> Just a hint: MUCH easier to read and write RNG using the compact syntax.
>>
>> Here's an example of validation of child elements conditioned on an 
>> attribute.
>>
>> start = element doc { foo | bar }
>>
>> foo = attribute type { "foo" }, element x { text }+
>> bar = attribute type { "bar" }, element y { text }+