[XML-SIG] A bit off topic: XML advice needed...

[Fred L. Drake]

Stuart Hungerford writes:
 > My first mental reaction (in a sort of pseudocode is):
 > 
 >      class date
...
 >      class event

Stuart,
  Another possibility you may want to seriously consider (and may have 
thought of by now), but that hasn't been proposed, would be to use a
notation to specify that something is a date (specifying a data type), 
and elements (or attributes) for the structural aspects:

	<!NOTATION iso8601-w3c SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime">
	<!ELEMENT event (start-date, end-date, ...)>
	<!ATTLIST start-date
		  notation NOTATION (iso8601-w3c) "iso8601-w3c"
		  >
	<!ATTLIST end-date
		  notation NOTATION (iso8601-w3c) "iso8601-w3c"
		  >

  Your document might then look like this:

	<event>
	  <start-date>1999-03-03</start-date>
	  <end-date>1999-03-04</end-date>
	  ...
	</event>

  The concerns brought up by Betty and Matt still apply.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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