DTD associations

Typically, a large number of XML documents are created to serve a particular purpose, and a DTD or schema is written to describe and control the model they should all adhere to. A stylesheet author may refer to the DTD or schema to discover which elements may occur, and the contexts within which they may be used, in order to ensure that the stylesheet to be created covers all legal document structure scenarios.

There is therefore a close relationship between the DTD and the completed stylesheet; they both apply to the same collection of related documents:

Stylesheet authors should understand enough about the nature, scope and syntax of the DTD or schema language used in order to be able to determine:

• which elements are allowed in the document (that may need to be formatted)

• which of these elements are optional (to avoid relying on their presence)

• the contexts within which these elements may be used (to detect contextual conflicts and context-specific formatting needs (see below))

• which attributes may affect formatting requirements.