Re: Document Engineering was RE: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Robert C. Leif <rleif@rleif.com> wrote:
: Since DTDs do not have the virtue of readability,

Really? I rather think it is the other way round. What is unreadable
about

<!ELEMENT   its-name  (its, content+, model, and-more*) >?

In typical FramMaker use, does it really make so much sense to
use a verbose XML syntax for symbols like *, meaning what it
has meant for decades for regular languages and related issues?
Is

  book*  

less readable than

  name="book" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"?

: their use precludes
: extending FrameMaker and integrating other XML applications.

I think that depends on the DTD. A good DTD design makes sure
users can add definitions, or can replace modules with their own.
As for namespace conflicts, if they cannot be resolved for
whatever reason, using XML namespaces is not yet the complete
solution to the poblem of integrating several resources, is it?

: I might note
: the DTDs from other sources that had been validated by XMLSpy could not be
: imported into FrameMaker.

Hm. Do you think that if the producers of FrameMaker  haven't got
this right, they would have done a better job using Schema instead?

: Although FrameMaker has much better numbering than
: Word, FrameMaker has not split a prefix, such as "Figure" from the number
: that follows.

Is this due to a limitation in FM's cross referencing machinery?
I can't think of a reason why it should not be possible to make
captions handling as versatile as we want as far as a DTD is
conerned.

-- Georg