[VCDImager Bugs/Devel] some XML/DTD questions

[Matto Marjanovic]

Heya,

I actually have started hacking around with parsing XML.  Not the steepest
 learning curve, but certainly not a downhill trot.  Anyhow, I've got a
 couple of questions (i.e. complaints) with regards to the 'videocd.dtd'
 in CVS:

 o Why does the 'selection' element require an IDREF attribute?
    (I can't imagine what it is even referencing.)
 o The 'selection' element should have one optional 'item' child,
    not many.  (i.e. item?, not item*)
 o What about numeric events for 'selection'?  That's missing altogether.
    Something along the lines of:

     <!ELEMENT numeric EMPTY>
     <!ATTLIST numeric
       ref      IDREF     #REQUIRED
       num      CDATA     #REQUIRED
     >
 
 o Ok, a more complicated question:  should 'bsn' be implicit or explicit.
    I'm assuming (I should test this) that the BSN is the "number" for the
    first entry in the list of numeric selections; thus, if someone presses
    '5', the vcd player follows  numeric_selection[5-BSN].
   So, you could specify numeric selections in the conf file by:
     a)  Give the BSN followed by a sequence of (unnumbered) list references.
         If you want blanks/unassigned numbers, you need to somehow specify
           a 'numeric' element with no reference.
    OR
     b)  Give a sequence of numbered list references, not necessarily in
          any order.  The BSN is computed on the fly (from the minimum),
          and the continuous sequence (possibly with blanks) is constructed.

   (a) directly records what is in the selection list record on disk.
   (b) does more to capture the semantic content of what it is supposed to do.

   Opinions?


-matt m.