XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

DTDs for Narrative Documents

Narrative-oriented DTDs tend be a lot looser and make much heavier use of mixed content than do DTDs that describe more database-like documents. Consequently, they tend to be written from the bottom up, starting with the smallest elements and building up to the largest. They also tend to use parameter entities to group together similar content specifications and attribute lists.

Example 3-7 is a standalone DTD for biographies like the one shown in Example 2-5 of the last chapter. Notice that not everything it declares is actually present in Example 2-5. That’s often the case with narrative documents. For instance, not all web pages contain unordered lists, but the XHTML DTD still needs to declare the ul element for those XHTML documents that do include them. Also, notice that a few attributes present in Example 2-5 have been made into fixed defaults here.

Example 3-7. A narrative-oriented DTD for biographies

<!ATTLIST biography xmlns:xlink CDATA #FIXED "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <!ELEMENT person (first_name, last_name)> <!-- Birth and death dates are given in the form yyyy/mm/dd --> <!ATTLIST person born CDATA #IMPLIED died CDATA #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT date (month, day, year)> <!ELEMENT month (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT day (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT year (#PCDATA)> <!-- xlink:href must contain a URL.--> <!ATTLIST emphasize xlink:type (simple) #IMPLIED xlink:href CDATA #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT profession (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT footnote (#PCDATA)> <!-- The source is given ...