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<H2><A NAME="s8">8.</A> <A HREF="Howtos-with-LinuxDoc.html#toc8">Jargon in Error Messages</A></H2>
<H2><A NAME="ss8.1">8.1</A> <A HREF="Howtos-with-LinuxDoc.html#toc8.1">Introduction</A>
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<P>You really shouldn't need to read this section unless either you're
either having problems or you're curious about how sgml and linuxdoc
work. Error messages may contain words like "element", "entities,
"attribute", "literal", and delimiter". Various elements, entities
and attributes are defined for linuxdoc in the "Data Type Definition"
(or dtd) for LinuxDoc. The dtd doesn't define them in sentences but
uses a rather cryptic format to define their syntax (but not their
semantics).</P>
<H2><A NAME="ss8.2">8.2</A> <A HREF="Howtos-with-LinuxDoc.html#toc8.2">Elements</A>
</H2>
<P>An "element" is something like a tag. But it's a much broader
concept. Elements exist not only in linuxdoc but in all sgml
languages like say html. Your entire document is partitioned into
elements. But elements are nested, which is to say that some elements
may occur within other elements. If you use the &lt;article> tag for
your document, then all of the document is the &lt;article> element,
except for the very first tag which says that what follows is
linuxdoc. And within this article element are nested many other
elements.</P>
<P>For example, each paragraph is an element, even though the paragraphs
are separated from each other by blank lines instead of tags. But
there's an implicit tag surrounding each paragraph and the software
that parses a linuxdoc writing will actually insert these missing tags.
It will also insert end tags (closing tags) where you didn't need to
write any. In this way, linuxdoc saves you a lot of time. So an
element will consist of a start tag and the end tag (for this start
tag) and everything in between (often including other elements and
their tags). Note that the tags omitted but they still are implicitly
there. In some cases, a tag doesn't enclose anything, like the url
tag for a link to the internet. Such tags are themselves elements.
Within the article-element are found sect-elements (sections) starting
with &lt;sect>. Then within sect-elements are often found
sect1-elements (subsections), etc.</P>
<P>There are few cases where an element occurs but the use of both start
and end tags are optional. So even if you have no such tags in your
document, the parts of the document that they should have enclosed are
still elements for the missing tags.</P>
<P>An entity is like a macro definition. For example, one could
define the name "list" to mean the various types of lists. Then this
name list is used only in the dtd to specify, for example, that a list
may occur within a paragraph. It's just a shorthand for the writer of
a dtd. This kind of an entity is never used in a linuxdoc document.
But there's also another type of entity that can be used inside a
document and that's one that defines a special character such as
amp;etago for &lt;/ (end tag open). You would use this when you
want to, for example, put &lt;/article> in the middle of a sentence
to explain what it means so that the software that converts LinuxDoc
doesn't think it's really at the end of the article.</P>
<H2><A NAME="ss8.3">8.3</A> <A HREF="Howtos-with-LinuxDoc.html#toc8.3">Literals and Delimiters</A>
</H2>
<P>A "literal" is a name of something, like the name one clicks on in
an html link. It may be one or more words long. A delimiter is what
separates something from something else. For a "quote" the last " is
the closing delimiter. So for name="my website" the literal is 'my
website' and the delimiters of this literal are the two " marks, the
first " an opening delimiter and second " a closing delimiter. So if
a "literal is missing a closing delimiter it means that you neglected
to put an ending " after a name.</P>
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