Murray Altheim announced
the release of
preliminary versions of "archy", a
framework for building modular DTDs,
and "instance
karma", an XSLT stylesheet that creates a DTD from an
XML file.
Both tools create DTDs which use the conventions outlined
in the W3C Working Draft Building XML
Modules.
archy, available in versions 1.0 and a namespace-aware
1.1, provides four core elements which may be reused,
remodeled,
or
replaced as the designer finds necessary. archy is a
framework, not a program, which "uses a set of naming
conventions
such that DTDs created using archy are highly predictable,
maintainable, and extensible." Effectively, archy
provides a
foundation for testing how well the approach used by XHTML
1.1 can be applied to other structures.
instance karma provides an alternate route for designers
to build DTDs that use the conventions of XHTML. While
instance
karma doesn't yet build separate modules, it can take a
simple XML document instance, one with some extra attributes
defining information about the DTD to be created, and create
a shell DTD. This foundation can then be combined with
other
modules from XHTML, archy, or instance karma, without having
to create all the necessary structures by hand.