Glossary of terms

Attribute

Markup that allows further description of an element. Attribute information for an element is stored in its start-tag.

Attribute name

A label for an attribute value.

Attribute value

A string that provides an additional description of an element.

Catalog

A file containing mappings from public identifiers to system identifiers and other information.

Comment

Special markup and content that is solely for the eyes of the readers of the XML or SGML source of a document.

Content model

The rules for the configuration of element and/or data content allowable in instances of an element type.

Current element

The XML or SGML element containing the insertion cursor.

Document

A collection of information that is processed as a unit.

Document element

The element that is the outermost element of an instance of a document type.

DTD

A document type declaration that specifies that possible structure of XML or SGML documents.

Document Template

A file that contains style settings and information on how to create a new document.

Document type

	A class of documents having the same characteristics; for example, journal, article, technical manual, or memo.
--ISO 8879

Element

	A component of the hierarchical structure defined by a document type definition; it is identified in a document instance by descriptive markup, usually a start-tag and end-tag.
--ISO 8879

Element type

The definition of an element; the element in an abstract sense, as opposed to any instances of that element type in the actual document.

Entity

A named fragment of document content that is stored separately from other fragments and can be included in a document one or more times by reference to its name.

Entity reference

Markup that indicates a location in a document where the content of an entity should be included.

Invalid Element

An element that does not match content model.

See Also: Element, Content model.

Markup

	Text that is added to the data of a document in order to convey information about it.
--ISO 8879

Parent element

An element that directly contains another element. The first element is said to be the parent of the second element.

Railroad diagram

A formalism used for representing content models by arrows and boxes. As you follow the arrows from left to right, you come across the valid order of elements inside the content model.

See Also: Content model.

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language.

	A language for document representation that formalizes markup and frees it of system and processing dependencies.
--ISO 8879

Style Sheet

Layout information on how to display (parts of) a document.

See Also: Document Template.

Template

Document Template

Valid XML document

An XML document that references a DTD in a DOCTYPE statement.

Wellformed XML document

An XML document that does not reference a DTD.

XML

Extensible Markup Language, a subset of SGML.

See Also: SGML.

XML declaration

	XML documents may, and should, begin with an XML declaration which specifies the version of XML being used.
--Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (W3C Recommendation 10-February-1998)