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Message-ID: <3CE6486B.5000407@koberg.com>
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 05:26:19 -0700
From: Robert Koberg <rob@koberg.com>
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Subject: Re: draft howto dtd
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Hi,

Piroumian Konstantin wrote:

>Steven,
>
>  
>
>>From: Steven Noels [mailto:stevenn@outerthought.org] 
>>
>>Ivelin,
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Do you guys thing its time to switch the DTD to XML Schema ?
>>>Xalan supports XML Schema validation and I've used it in
>>>production for a
>>>while now.
>>>      
>>>
>>At best, XML Schemas are commonly considered to be primarly data- and
>>not document-focused. Furthermore, the spec is crap, and the
>>implementations are only able to make some sense of this crap.
>>
>>Sorry for being so frank, but after teaching some courses on XML
>>Schemas, I'm quite convinced it is a horribly bloated language.
>>    
>>
>
>But you can't disagree that XSD has also some very useful features. And
>having a visual tool like XML Spy (Schema editor), I even haven't to know
>the XSD language details to create usable schemas. And the other good thing
>about the XSD is that it's XML and you can use XSLT to display it as you
>like.
>
>E.g. all Cocoon transformers, logicsheets and some generators should have
>their corresponding DTDs or schemas and they should be linked from the docs.
>I can see a lot more good features with XSD: filtering by element types,
>sorting, getting attributes for an element. I even think that some parts of
>docs can be autogenerated from XSD using the comments from it.
>
>What do you think?
>
Everything you mention can be accomplished without schema, especially 
for article-type documents. I can see where it would be useful for 
data-based documents, but tends to be a burden for simple articles.

There was a recent thread on the XSLT list about the usefulness of 
Schema. It mainly focuses on XSLT 2.0 and/or XPath 2.0 and the 
complexity introduced when using a Schema. A few of the posts:

start here (good analogy)
http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200205/msg00463.html
<quote author="Wendall Piez">

I've used W3C Schema a bit, and my experience with it suggests that most of 
it is vast overkill for most of what I want to do, which is on the 
document-centric not data-centric side. It's as if I were a baker, and W3C 
Schema were a chemistry lab: it's true that what I do involves some 
chemistry, but I can achieve what I want with some leavening and a 350 
degree oven. Although Schema's mortar and pestle are nice, the centrifuge 
and autoclave are rather more than I need, and I don't have any idea why 
I'd want that hydrochloric acid. Please don't tell me I'd be a better baker 
if I learned to use the centrifuge, or about the great virtues of 
hydrochloric acid: that's just telling me you don't know from baking! :-)

</quote>

and other bits and pieces (was a relatively long thread)
http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200205/msg00501.html
http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200205/msg00660.html
http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200205/msg00674.html

best,
-Rob