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Subject: Re: antstructure task
References: <3B1FFC59.B2C78456@milagrosoft.com>
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From: Stefan Bodewig <bodewig@apache.org>
Date: 12 Jun 2001 07:41:05 +0200
In-Reply-To: Eric Richardson's message of "Mon, 11 Jun 2001 08:50:41 -0700"
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Eric Richardson <eric@milagrosoft.com> wrote:

> I use emacs with psglms as an XML editor.

XEmacs here, but otherwise I know what you are talking about.

> That might be a very nice enhancement - just call the parser in
> validating mode?

The problem with the "DTD" antstructure generates is - it is not a DTD
for valid build files.  The extensibility of Ant renders this
impossible, as DTDs are too restricted.

The main problem is, that people writing tasks can define their own
nested elements (which is good) and may choose names for these nested
elements that have been used in some other context as well (which is
not bad, but violates a possible DTD).

Take <test> for example.  There is an optional task by that name with
an element definition like this:

<!ELEMENT test (arg | jvmarg | classpath | sysproperty | testlet)*>

and a nested child of <junit> which would be 

<!ELEMENT test EMPTY>

The real solution is to switch to XML Schema here.  Extending
antstructure to support XSD is on the agenda, but I guess it will take
some time - as well as it will take time for the tools (including
PSGML) to support XSD.

Stefan