On Apr 5, 2004, at 1:44 PM, Andrew E Switala wrote:
> Do you have an example of MODS usage (extending, embedding, generating
> a
> data entry form, or whatever) that would be easier using Relax NG?
Yes, I created a schema that validates a third schema for the extension
element. Here's the schema in the compact syntax:
include "biblio-notes.rnc"
include "mods.rnc" {
extension = element extension { biblio-notes }
}
I confess to not knowing how easy this is to do in XSD, but it's pretty
elegant in RNG obviously.
And here's the annotation schema I use in the extension element:
http://www.users.muohio.edu/darcusb/files/biblio-notes.rnc
I also, just for the hell of it, did something similar with DocBook,
replacing its metadata with MODS. The approach is similar.
> Also, I am under the impression that Trang's conversion to W3C schema
> language is only an approximation.
There are some things you can do in RELAX NG that cannot be represented
in XSD. So you have two choices: 1) don't use that functionality, or
b) allow the XSD version to be a little looser. In some cases, Trang
will choke, in which case there's also a third option (see below).
> It does no good for there to be two slightly incompatible grammars
> called MODS 3 available, least of all of they're both "official"
> versions maintained by the LoC.
To turn this around though:
1) It does no good to have a standard that's defined in a language
that important potential developers don't use. I've been talking to
people from the DocBook and OpenOffice Technical Committees about
citation improvements that will likely have some relation to MODS.
None of these people use XSD, and some of them that have looked at it
absolutely hate it.
2) All of the standards I mentioned (save Atom) are more complex than
MODS, in some cases much more complex. I doubt their developers would
switch to RELAX NG if they didn't feel there was a workable way to
generate DTD and XSD representations of them, since different users
have different needs, use different tools, etc.
To be fair, though, I recall list discussions from TEI and OpenOffice
developers in particular where they used some processing to massage the
RELAX NG into the other languages.
I realize these issues aren't easy; just asking the LoC crew to look
into this.
Bruce
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