Kevin wrote:

I've taken the route of marking up a textual description, using a minimum of tags. It seems to me that a description comprises a series of features with values. I've used mixed markup because I wanted to have the mimimum tagging and make maximum use of the text.

Although XML allows mixed content such as Kevin's: <Feature><Name>spines</Name>, not developing at each node, <Feature Name="Length" MinValue="0">to c. <MaxValue>1</MaxValue><Units>cm</Units> long</Feature> </Feature> and such a document can be validated against a schema, apart from being untidy and inelegant, mixed content can pose certain problems when attempted to be loaded into a relational database; this is probably not going to impress people like Gregor.

Can we agree that although mixed content XML is quite allowable, we are going to try and avoid it in the SDD context?

jim

~ Jim Croft ~ jrc@anbg.gov.au ~ 02-62465500 ~ www.anbg.gov.au/jrc/ ~