[Mailman-Developers] email schemas

[John Dennis]

On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 17:24 +0100, Ian Eiloart wrote:
> 
> --On 6 July 2006 11:30:08 -0400 John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure I understand what the purpose is in treating the extended
> > fields differently, it seems like it would overly complicate the xml
> > navigation without any clear advantage. Anyone who is interested in the
> > value of an extended field will know it by name and ask for it by name
> > just like the defined fields.
> 
> I think the problem is that you can't define them in the schema. With 
> ethan's mechanism, you just have to define one tag - x-header.

O.K. that makes sense, but I guess it boils down to a design choice.

1) Well defined DTD/Schema, but awkward to use in practice.

2) Easy to use, but no standardized DTD/Schema to be used for
validation.

Most literature on XML concedes there is quite a bit of give and take in
XML design which needs to be flexible and take into consideration a host
of factors. Most authors suggest strict DTD/Schema is mostly appropriate
for documents with complex structure or where the document receiver has
no apriori knowledge of the document structure. I don't think either of
these apply in this circumstance. I think the document structure is
extremely simple, a head element which contains one level of child
elements.

Like I said, it's a design choice, each has their merits. In this case
my vote would be for simplicity and ease of use over rigor.

BTW, is the intention this XML document is going to have full blown
parsing all the way through all the mime (sub)parts? The answer to that
question probably drives how much rigor is appropriate.

-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>
Red Hat Inc.