[examplotron] Re: What needs to be done?

martin.me.roberts@bt.com wrote:
> Jonathan,
> I took the previous XSLT version of examplotron and provided for
> a set of extensions.
>
> One major one was for full namespace support using the same
> prefixes in asserts as used in the examples provided

It shouldn't just be asserts; content could also benefit from full
namespace support, so that you can define prefixes other than eg, xsd, and
dtd for Examplotron, XML Schema Datatypes, and DTD compatability,
respectively.

> The next was to add support for attributes as follows:
>
> If there was an element level attribute (eg:occurs) I introduced
> an attribute level attribute (eg:occursAttr). The contents of this
> attribute is a list, formatted as follows:
> (attributeName[values])
>
> So you get: <element attr1="example" attr2="example">Example</element>
> could be marked up as:
>
> <element attr1="example" attr2="example"
> eg:occurs="?" eg:occursAttr="attr1[?] attr2[.]">
> Example</element>
>
> From this you can see that using attribute I was able mark up
> both elements and attributes. I have found this 'less intrusive' on the
> undelying example than the introducing eg:elements.

I assume that, by 'eg:elements', you're referring specifically to
<eg:attribute>, right? If so, you could get a similar effect that's even
less intrusive by allowing an attribute's value to contain "{lib:type!}"
or "{!}" in addition to "{lib:type}"; any attribute with an exclamation
point in the curly braces is required, and any other attribute is
optional:

        <element attr1="example" attr2="{!}example"
                eg:occurs="?"/>Example</element>

> I favour this attribute only approach as it means that the Xpath
> of any element or attribute in the example is not changed in any way,
> including position. I also feel that as soon as you intriduce elements
> you are moving too close to a schema language and you may as well use
> relax first off.

Note that there's exactly one place where I've recommended the use of an
element annotation: to represent a class of elements. Every other example
that I gave dealt either with attribute annotations or value annotations.

(to clarify: an element annotation would be of the form <eg:name ... />;
an attribute notation would be of the form <element eg:name="..." />; and
a value notation would be of the form <element attribute="{...}" /> or
<element> {...} </element>. The last one is the only aspect that isn't
strictly XML; but I think that it, or something like it, is crucial to the
success of Examplotron.)

=====
Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang

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Received on Thu Jul 10 23:51:27 2003