Re: [docbook-apps] Tool to query dtd/schema for valid element children|attributes

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

Hi David,

> I'm looking for a tool that will enable me to query the docbook dtd -- 
> given a particular element, I want to get lists of its valid children 
> and attributes.  Ideally it could also provide information about an 
> attribute's content type.

Have you tried Earl Hood's perlSGML (SGML::DTD Perl module)? The
distribution includes a "dtdview" utility that enables interactive
querying of DTDs; example:

  $ dtdview dtd/4.2/docbookx.dtd
  Reading catalog(s) ...
  Warning: Unable to open entity map file: catalog
  Warning: Unable to open entity map file: /sandbox/xsl/catalog
  Reading dtd/4.2/docbookx.dtd ...
  (docbookx) -> content personname

  Content model for PERSONNAME:

       ((honorific | firstname | surname | lineage | othername)+)

If you type "attributes [elementname]", it'll give you information
about those.

It's packaged for Debian (perlsgml).

One glitch I've run into with it is that it does not seem to be
able to correctly handle the standard multi-file/modular version
of the DocBook DTD. But it does work correctly with a "flattened"
single-file version.

You can download flattened versions of the DocBook XML DTDs here:

  http://docbook.sourceforge.net/dtd/

> So far I've tried the perl modules XML::DTDParser, XML::ParseDTD and 
> XML::SMART::DTD.  All of them work with other DTDs, but fail to process 
> http://oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd (or the local copy on 
> my system).

I've never tried any of those, but perhaps like perlSGML they
might work better with a flattened version of the DTD.

> Can anyone point me to a tool that might suit my needs?  If there's a 
> tool that can query RNG, I can translate the DTD using trang.

oXygen XML Editor includes a tool that enables you to view the
contents of an RNG grammar in graphical form (like ELM-tree
diagrams for the SGML days). It's point-and-click. I only tried it
once briefly but I remember one great feature of it being that it
can give you both "unexpanded" and "expanded" views of content
models. That is, if the pattern for an element contains named
patterns, it doesn't automatically expand those named patterns
unless you explicitly click on them.[1]

Other than that, I don't know of any other tools or libraries that
enable interactive querying of RNG grammars.

Perhaps there's something for querying XSD schemas? You could also
convert the DTD to an XSD schema with trang.

  --Mike

[1] One problem I always had with the SGML tools that could
    generate ELM diagrams was that they all automically expanded
    parameter entities. So they couldn't give you an "unexpanded"
    view of content models.

-- 
Michael Smith
http://sideshowbarker.net/

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