It all depends why you want to measure it. The metric is presumably supposed
to be a predictor of something, and you need to know what. 

From my viewpoint, a DTD is complex if it makes extensive use of parameter
entities - but from another viewpoint, it's much simpler than the equivalent
DTD with all the PEs fully expanded.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mattio Valentino [mailto:mattio.valentino@g...] 
> Sent: 16 July 2007 22:01
> To: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: [xml-dev] Measure the complexity of one DTD versus another?
> 
> I was asked an interesting question on Friday.  Is there a 
> way to measure the complexity of our new DTD versus our old DTD?
> 
> I haven't come up with anything too concrete.  Our new DTD 
> has far fewer tags, but it's more rigid.  Based on that, I'd 
> say the new is less complex.  Unfortunately, I think the real 
> issue is that because it's more rigid, it's harder for 
> off-shore companies to convert large quantities of documents 
> to the new DTD simply because it doesn't accept as much 
> "garbage" tagging.
> 
> Has anyone else answered such a question?  How did you do it?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mattio
> 
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