Re: [dita] foreign element description issue (non-XML?)

[Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>]

On 12/17/09 10:29 AM, "Eliot Kimber" <ekimber@reallysi.com> wrote:

> But the *content* of the <foreign> element is not XML, meaning that it
> cannot, itself, be parsed as XML, which is the intended meaning of the
> statement you cite.
> 
> The <foreign> element itself is of course XML. It's content may or may not
> be XML.

It's actually more complicated than the current spec maybe suggests, in that
the content of the <foreign> element may be a mix of DITA and non-DITA
elements as well as character data, where the DITA elements are interpreted
according to their normal DITA semantics (e.g., <desc>) but everything else
is interpreted according to whatever semantics are imposed by the
specialization of <foreign>.

Not sure how to say that clearly or crisply.

In particular, processors that pass the content of foreign elements to
handlers cannot simply pass a sequence of elements but must provide all
nodes that make up the content of the <foreign> element.

Cheers,

Eliot

-- 
Eliot Kimber
Senior Solutions Architect
"Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
Main: 610.631.6770
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