I don't understand how this addresses the problem
of delivering a large hierarchical document in HTML+
chunks. Are you suggesting that I create a "master"
document that contains entity references to the nested
sections, each of which could be in a separate file? If I
access the master document, would the entities be resolved
and all the content pulled in for viewing? (Do any HTTP
servers do that?) If so, that is the same as pulling across
the whole book.
Also, the external files would not each be parsable SGML,
right? They would be SGML fragments because their parent
section containers would be in the master file. So they
couldn't be accessed directly. I'm looking for random
access into pieces of a large document.
Nesting section containers is great when you are working
with the whole document. But it seems less desirable
in a modular system like WWW. SGML doesn't require
nesting section containers, although it is the most
common way of representing hierarchical information.
I'm hoping the hierarchical relationships between sections
can still be encoded in SGML, using a flatter style of
DTD like HTML.
bobs