DOCBOOK: Re: RELAX NG and DocBook

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org> was heard to say:
| I was thinking the ISO character entities at least could be turned
| into elements, but then realized that -- because they'd have to valid
| anywhere in a document instance -- if they were made elements, and you
| were using a validating editor, wanted to insert a new element into
| you document, and pulled down a menu or did a completion to see which
| elements were valid, you'd be presented not just with a list of the
| "real" elements valid at that point, but also with a bazillion ISO
| "entity" elements, every time.

That's really a tools problem and I think it could be addressed. Using
elements for character entities seems practical at first:

  Instead of &eacute;, you write <e:eacute/>

For an appropriate entity namespace, that's not too bad. Until you
want an eacute in an attribute value...

| I know the workaround is to reference the entities in an internal DTD
| subset in your document instances, like this:
[...]
| ...and you could do the same thing for any custom general entities you
| want to declare. But that seems like an less-than-elegant solution.

Yes. But as long as we're doing that, we're still relying on DTDs. (I
don't think that has to be considered a problem, but some do.)

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | In a universe of electrons and
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | selfish genes, blind physical
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | forces and genetic replication,
                                   | some people are going to get hurt,
                                   | other people are going to get
                                   | lucky, and you won't find any
                                   | rhyme or reason in it, nor any
                                   | justice.--Richard Dawkins