Hi Daniel,

There might be one more option if the validation time of the application isn't critical which is to embedd Schematron rules in your RELAX-NG schema to check that the unrestricted text content match your defined constraints. Here is an example of how this could look for the example provided by Mike:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <element name="example" xmlns="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"> <sch:pattern name="Check the text content" xmlns:sch="http://www.ascc.net/xml/schematron"> <sch:rule context="example"> <sch:assert test="text()[1] = 'The quick '" >The first text node must be 'The quick '.</sch:assert> <sch:assert test="text()[2] = ' brown fox '" >The second text node must be ' brown fox '.</sch:assert> <sch:assert test="text()[3] = ' jumped over the lazy dog 5 times.'">The third text node must be ' jumped over the lazy dog 5 times.'.</sch:assert> <sch:assert test="normalize-space(.) = 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 5 times.'">The whole text must be 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 5 times.'.</sch:assert> </sch:rule> </sch:pattern> <interleave> <text/> <element name="a"><empty/></element> <element name="b"><empty/></element> <element name="c"><empty/></element> </interleave> </element>

As you can see you can make assertions about each text node separataly or as a whole. In Schematron you have access to all the String and Number fucntions in XPath so can make fairly complex assertions about the text even if you can't use regular expressions. For more info on how to embedd Schematron rules in RELAX-NG schemas (or W3C XML Schema) see [1].

Cheers, /Eddie

[1] http://www.topologi.com/public/Schtrn_XSD/Paper.html