Re: XSL-optimized DTDs (Was: Re: Mixed content: selecting current context w/out child)

["John E. Simpson" <simpson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:02 AM 3/15/99 +0800, James Tauber wrote:
>In data-oriented markup, you often want to ask questions about (or style on
>the basis of) both entities (in the non-SGML/XML sense) and relationships.
>So it often makes sense to markup both. In your actor role example, you
>could have (where I'm calling the mapping of actor to character a role):
>
><Role>
>    <Actor>
>        <Name>Candace Hilligoss</Name>
>    </Actor>
>    <Character>
>        <Name>Mary Henry</Name>
>    </Character>
></Role>

Yah. In FlixML ver. 3.0 (not yet available on-line), I've done pretty much
just that (ATTLISTs omitted for brevity):
  <!ELEMENT cast  	(leadcast, othercast?) >
  <!ELEMENT leadcast  	((male | female | animal)*) >
  <!ELEMENT othercast  	((male | female | animal)*) >
  <!ELEMENT male  	(castmember, role)* >
  <!ELEMENT female  	(castmember, role)* >
  <!ELEMENT animal  	(castmember, role, species)* >
  <!ELEMENT castmember	(#PCDATA) >
  <!ELEMENT role		(#PCDATA) >
  <!ELEMENT species	(#PCDATA) >

So the above example would be represented:
  <cast>
    <leadcast>
      <female>
        <castmember>Candace Hilligoss</castmember>
        <role>Mary Henry</role>
      </female>
    </leadcast>
  </cast>

At first glance -- well, in fact :) -- much harder to mark up by hand. But
as you point out, this seeming anal-retentiveness can pay much higher
dividends when it comes time actually to *do* something with the data.
"Show me all female leads; show me all female roles; show me all roles" and
so on.

==========================================================
John E. Simpson            | The secret of eternal youth
simpson@xxxxxxxxxxx        | is arrested development.
http://www.flixml.org      |  -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth


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