XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Mixed Content

In Example 2-2, the contents of the first_name, last_name, and profession elements were character data; that is, text that does not contain any tags. The contents of the person and name elements were child elements and some whitespace that most applications will ignore. This dichotomy between elements that contain only character data and elements that contain only child elements (and possibly a little whitespace) is common in record-like documents. However, XML can also be used for more free-form, narrative documents, such as business reports, magazine articles, student essays, short stories, web pages, and so forth, as shown by Example 2-3.

Example 2-3. A narrative-organized XML document

<biography> <paragraph> <name><first_name>Alan</first_name> <last_name>Turing</last_name> </name> was one of the first people to truly deserve the name <emphasize>computer scientist</emphasize>. Although his contributions to the field are too numerous to list, his best-known are the eponymous <emphasize>Turing Test</emphasize> and <emphasize>Turing Machine</emphasize>. </paragraph> <definition>The <term>Turing Test</term> is to this day the standard test for determining whether a computer is truly intelligent. This test has yet to be passed. </definition> <definition>A <term>Turing Machine</term> is an abstract finite state automaton with infinite memory that can be proven equivalent to any any other finite state automaton with arbitrarily large memory. Thus what is true for one ...