Subject: Re: Recognizing Sequences (was More XSL Discussion) From: Sean Mc Grath <digitome@xxxxxx> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 15:46:05 GMT |
>Mike Kay, ICL > >The natural conclusion from this line of reasoning might be that we ought >really to be associating processing actions with syntax rules in the >document's DTD. Thoughts? I gave a paper at SGML '96 on exactly this topic. When drawing analogies between SGML DTDs and Jackson structure models, one inevitably arrives at the point where the analogy breaks down. That point is where actions are attatched. The question then begs to be asked "why not attach actions to the component parts of content models?" In Jackson-think the DTD is the ideal place to specify actions because context can be made explicit in the model so that you do not have to hand-craft it with predicates like "If I am the first item in a list, do this, else do this". If you have: <!ELEMENT list (item)+> and want to do something special to the first item in a list you can change the model to an equivalent one: <!ELEMENT list (item,item*)> Now you hang your actions out of the two item elements in the model and the application can do the rest. This way you don't need "if first item then do this ..." because the "first item" context is now explicit in the model. In Jackson, there is no such thing as *the* correct model. There are any number of equally correct models. You pick the one that suits the problem at hand. In the case of formatting, Jacksons ideas could, I think be very useful! XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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