Re: Convert DTD to IDL ?

[linas@xxxxxxxxx]

It's been rumoured that Frank A. Christoph said:
> 
> >> Yes, I am working in a similar vein, I have been thinking of the
> >> document instance as the state information for instantiating an
> >> object and the CORBA/idl as defining the interface.
> 
> 
> This is a very good idea that I have toyed around with myself.  The second
> biggest problem with SGML in my mind is that it defines a data format rather
> than an object interface.  This is precisely the reason that entities
> references between documents are handled so badly, and HyTime tree pathlocs,
> etc. are so useless.  If you define an interface to the document, then it is
> possible to change the internal structure (alter the implementation) without
> affecting document clients.  I think it is also possible to do something
> like this with so-called architectures, but architectures are a mess without
> even a hint of a well-defined semantics.

Never meant to imply that DTD's are a good way of defining programming
interfaces; they're not; IDL's are much better.

Its just that OFX (open financial exchange) is written as DTD's, not
IDL's, and since its a standard, I don't have much choice.  Gotta work
with what I have.

> If this notion of document interfaces had existed when DSSSL was drawn up,
> maybe DSSSL construction rules would be dispatching on the methods rather
> than matching on the element names, etc.  DSSSL style sheets would be a
> client of the document interface.


Hmm, might be fun to do, but at this point, I am a novice, and can't
begin to lead a crusade to create a DSSSL follow-on.

--linas


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