Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 10:11:58 +0100 From: Michael Kay <M.H.Kay@eng.icl.co.uk> Subject: A DTD Generator To: Xml-Dev <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
If you share my distaste for the syntax of DTDs and would rather wash the car than sit down to write one, you may be interested in a little utility I have written called DTDGen. It takes a well-formed XML document and generates a DTD for it.
Of course, it has limitations. It is trying to induce general rules from one example. But I've found it useful in a number of contexts:
you can use it to produce a "first cut" DTD which you can then refine by hand
you can construct an XML document that exhibits as many structural features of your document design as possible and then use DTDGen to generate something close to the "true" DTD
you can use it to gain an understanding of the structure of XML documents that have been published without a DTD (an example being the XML specification itself)
This is homespun software not a professional product, use it accordingly. You can download it from http://home.iclweb.com/icl2/mhkay/dtdgen.zip.
You will need an XML parser and SAX 1.0 driver (and of course a Java 1.1 environment). The download includes java source and class files (copy these to your classpath) and an HTML document explaining what it does and what it doesn't.
Let me know of any problems.
Mike Kay
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