Extend xhtml1.0 with custom elements

[__PPS__]

Hello, I'm newbe to xml/dtd (and probably I don't use all the termins
correctly). I'm writing an application that parses xhtml file with
custom elements and splits it into 2 parts - valid xhtml1.0 and a
script file.
basicly I have this:
....
<MYML:form action="">
<MYML:input type="text"> ... ...
</MYML:form>
....
then my parser searches for MYML:form transforms it to xhtml1:
<form action="">
<input type="text"> ... ...
</form>
and produces script that handles submition of this form.

I'm using xerces validating parser (is it a good choice?) and I want to
write a module to extend xhtml_1.0 dtd to include my custom element. I
read w3.ord TRs (Modularization of XHTML, w3schools tutorials and
others) but I still have some trouble.
My goal is to make sure that MYML dtd is superset of xhtml_1.0 - any
valid xhtml1 is also valid MYML document (when I followed examples on
the w3.org site I always have some troble - somtimes valid xhtml docs
don't validate against MYML dtd. For instance, I have problems with
<script ...> tag - it doesn't seem to be recognized anymore). The
second thing is that I want to make sure that my new MYML:form element
may appear only where XHTML:form element may appear and (if that's
possible) MYML:form could include HTML:input or MYML:input and so on
for other form elements (when a form element is used with MYML prefix
then there will be some extra code generated for this element). MYML
form elements (such as MYML:input) should have all the attributes from
the usual input element plus some extra MYML.attribs
It should be modular - I want to be able to make custom dtd's for all
xhtml1.0 dtd's (strict, transitional, frameset). From the beginning I
downloaded xhtml1-strict.dtd and tried to edit it to add the extra
attributes, then I would have to repeat the same task with other dtd's.
I gave up this aproach when I googled to Modularization of XHTML, which
seem to be a better solution.


If someone on this group knows something about
dtd/extending/modularization, please help me with this task (by an
advice, or a link to a good source on this subject)

Thank you

 

[Martin Honnen]

__PPS__ wrote:

<MYML:form action="">
<MYML:input type="text"> ... ...
</MYML:form>

One thing is for sure, writing DTDs for XML with namespaces is a tedious
thing, if I had the choice I would opt to use XSD schemas instead of
DTDs. That assumes that MYML:form is supposed to be a qualified name and
you want to have those elements in your own namespace.

If someone on this group knows something about
dtd/extending/modularization, please help me with this task (by an
advice, or a link to a good source on this subject)

The XHTML 1.0 DTDs are not easy to use for modularization, as you have
already found the W3C later, after XHTML 1.0 has laid the foundation for
modularization with
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization>
so take that as a start and then look at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11>
which makes use of that.
XHTML Basic <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic> is also an example.

But in the end you want more than using the defined modules, you want to
have your own module and mix that, an example of that is MathML as a DTD
module:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/appendixa.html#parsing.module>
There is also a working draft mixing XHTML, MathML and SVG:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/XHTMLplusMathMLplusSVG>

There is also this tutorial:
<http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/xhtml-m12n-tutorial/>

 

[__PPS__]

One thing is for sure, writing DTDs for XML with namespaces is a tedious
thing, if I had the choice I would opt to use XSD schemas instead of
DTDs. That assumes that MYML:form is supposed to be a qualified name and
you want to have those elements in your own namespace.

Yes, I need my own namespace, however, it doesn't seem to be difficult
to implement with dtd. I chose dtd over xsd because xhtml1.0 is defined
by dtd

The XHTML 1.0 DTDs are not easy to use for modularization, as you have
already found the W3C later, after XHTML 1.0 has laid the foundation for
modularization with
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization>
so take that as a start and then look at
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11>
which makes use of that.
XHTML Basic <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic> is also an example.

I looked these docs, thanks. But the problem is that my resultin
document should be xhtml 1.0 (after transformation) but xhtml11 is more
strict. That means that some xhtml1.0 valid docs will not be valid for
my new MyML dtd (as it's going to be xhtml11 base). Am I right about
that?


One other thing - I read alot of tutorials - all of them describe how
to define <!ELEMENT ...> <!ATTRLIST ...> or whatever, but I never saw
anything about conditions as I saw inside some of the dtd's:
<![%MyML.prefixed;[
<!ENTITY % MyML.pfx "%MyML.prefix;:" >
]]>
<!ENTITY % MyML.pfx "" >

Where I could read about complete syntax for dtd (all those <!ENTETY
with '%' sign, vs <!ENTETY without '%' sign) etc... I still don't
understand a lot from the standard dtd's

thanks

 

[__PPS__]

ok, I found where syntax for dtd's s defined - xml specs define it.