"Chris Wilper" <cwilper@[...].edu>  wrote:

| It seems that a doctype exists for every element that can be used as a 
| root element in a document.

AFAIK, any element can be a root in an appropriate document: there is no
way to privilege some elements or to prohibit others.  The notion of a
"document type" is underspecified in SGML too; in particular, there is no
support for referencing a type (i.e. "declaring" a type by canonical name
only, as in "This is a Docbook document".)  See, e.g.

 http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=34E9CBC9.401B6BB0@[...].com

| Since an element can be defined as belonging to a namespace,

I think you mean "XML namespace", which makes it true by definition.  In
the ordinary sense of "namespace", a SGML/XML document has many of them in
a single document, all of them taken together comprising a taxonomy (or,
if you like, "vocabulary".)

| a corresponding doctype could similarly be defined -- and would naturally 
| fit within the same namespace,

What does this mean?  

Wouldn't it be better to have a name for the taxonomy as a whole, within
which components such as "elements" could be identified?

I sense some old debates cropping up again.


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