RELAX NG FAQ

[Kohsuke KAWAGUCHI <kohsuke.kawaguchi@sun.com>]

Just in case somebody forgets, there is an on-going effort of gathering
FAQ for RELAX NG at SourceForge RELAX NG project
(http://relaxng.sourceforge.net/). You can see the file itself at

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/~checkout~/relaxng/doc/faq.xml?rev=1.6&content-type=text/plain


Anyone (including non-TC members) is welcome to contribute answers as
well as questions.


Currently, there are a lot of questions which do not have any answer at
all.


- Why is RELAX NG so verbose?
- Why doesn't RELAX NG allow me to declare entities?
- Why doesn't RELAX NG allow me to declare notations?
- Why should I care about RELAX NG when I have DTDs?
- What about ID/IDREF? Why doesn't RELAX NG do ID/IDREF? What do I do if
  I need ID/IDREF?
- Why doesn't RELAX NG provide a feature like key, keyRef in XML Schema?
  What do I do if I need this functionality?
- Why does RELAX NG base itself on grammars?  Isn't a constraint-based
  approach like Schematron more powerful?
- What about exclusions (as in SGML)? Why doesn't RELAX NG support
  exclusions? What do I do if I need this functionality?
- I read that, unlike DTDs and XML Schema, RELAX NG does not prohibit
  ambiguous content models? Does this have any practical benefit?
- What's the difference between the <literal>empty</literal> pattern and
  the <literal>notAllowed</literal> pattern?
- What's the difference between the <literal>include</literal> pattern
  and the <literal>externalRef</literal> pattern?
- Why do I need RELAX NG, when W3C XML Schema is there?
- Why doesn't RELAX NG modify the infoset?
- I want to specify the default attribute value. How can I do that?
- How can I express the concept of the inheritance?
- How/where can I learn more about RELAX NG?
- What kind of tools are available now?
- What is the relationship between RELAX/TREX and RELAX NG


Also, please feel free to add answers to the questions which already
have answers. We are at the stage of putting as much answers as possible.


If I recall correctly, we've discussed that we should set some rules to
organize the process of discussing about FAQ. But considering relatively
low traffic of the list, probably no strict rule is needed. At least, I
guess it's not too late to set rules after it turns out to be a mess.

The only question I have is whether it's OK to have this discussion
at relax-ng@lists.oasis-open.org

Assuming that it is OK to do it here, I can commit answers on behalf of
those who don't want to bother using CVS.


I hope I'm not stepping into James' toe...  sorry if that is the case.

regards,
--
Kohsuke KAWAGUCHI                          +1 650 786 0721
Sun Microsystems                   kohsuke.kawaguchi@sun.com