Element Type Declaration |
Element type declarations provide a template for the actual element instances that appear within an XML document. The declaration determines what type of content, if any, can be contained within elements with the given name. The following sections describe the various element content options available.

Since namespaces are not explicitly included in the XML 1.0 Recommendation, element and attribute declarations within a DTD must give the complete (qualified) name that will be used in the target document. This means that if namespace prefixes will be used in instance documents, the DTD must declare elements and attributes just as they will appear, prefixes and all. While parameter entities may allow instance documents to use different prefixes, this still makes complete and seamless integration of namespaces into a DTD-based application very awkward.