Notations allow you to describe your own data types and file types. Notation information is processed by the parser only minimally; the applications that process your documents will need to provide an extra level of support to interpret notations. Notations declarations (Figure A) are required for use with unparsed entities and may also be used to create new data types for use with elements and attributes.
Figure A - The Notations tab of the Advanced pane lets you describe data types and file types.
Notations allow you to provide names for types and identifiers (system, public, or both) that provide information on those types. System identifiers are not required for notations, though at least one identifier (system or public) must appear. System identifiers may point to standards describing the content, or to programs that can actually process it. (Referencing programs may not be reliable if the document will be loaded in different environments.) Public identifiers should match the public identifiers standards authors provide for their specifications to ensure uniformity across documents from different sources.
The declarations above provide information on ISO8601 dates and times, and Java integers. Either could be used for a data type, and will appear as an option in the data type menus that appear in XML Authority's Element types pane and Attribute types pane.
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