March 1999 { Second Workshop on Attribute Grammars and Their Applications { Waga99 Adding Semantics to Xml

Starting form the analogy between a document tagged by a markup language (XML, SGML) and a source string generated by a BNF grammar, we argue that XML parsers should beneet from the addition of semantic attributes and functions. Currently XML only includes initialized lexical attributes. By our approach a XML parser would be extended into a syntax-directed translator. Deep transformations of a document could be speciied, sent over the network, and executed within the XML system. For the speciication of the semantic attributes and functions we propose a XML Document Type Deenition, that is conceptually similar to the metalanguage of a compiler-compiler. By this approach the additions to the XML standard are kept to a minimum. The diierences between attribute grammars and attributed XML speciications are discussed, and the system architecture of a semantic evaluator generator is presented.