> From: Priscilla Caplan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 02:48 PM
>
> At 11:41 AM 3/29/02 -0500, Geoff Mottram wrote:
> >I would like to propose an alternative declaration for the
> name, subject
> >and title elements that tackles the various issues raised with the
> >current implementation. It requires the general design
> philosophy that
> >if an element may contain sub-elements, it should not also contain
> >regular content.
>
> I actually agree with this rather strongly as a general
> design principle.
> Though we deal with many schemes (including EAD) that do
> allow mixed PCDATA
> and subelements, implementation is much easier if you do not allow it.
>
Actually, Geoff was not proposing (although I don't want to put words in
his mouth) mixing tags and PCDATA. What I believe he was proposing was
either or. According to a DTD schema both are considered mixed content
models. Here is his <creator> example:
<creator>
<type>personal</type>
<name>Abrams, Michael</name>
<description>(American artist, 20th c.)</description>
</creator>
In DTD term he was proposing:
<!ELEMENT creator (#PCDATA|(type,name,description)>
so you can have either any text you want or the elements type, name
and description. In this model you cannot mix text between the
elements type, name and description. He was not proposing:
<!ELEMENT creator (#PCDATA|type|name|description)>
The latter would be like HTML where you can do:
<div>
This is some text...
<a href="#">This is a link</a>
This is more text...
</div>
Andy.
