From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)
In a DTD, elements are declared with an ELEMENT declaration.
In a DTD, XML elements are declared with an element declaration with the following syntax:
<!ELEMENT element-name category> or <!ELEMENT element-name (element-content)> |
Empty elements are declared with the category keyword EMPTY:
<!ELEMENT element-name EMPTY> Example: <!ELEMENT br EMPTY> XML example: <br /> |
Elements with only parsed character data are declared with #PCDATA inside parentheses:
<!ELEMENT element-name (#PCDATA)> Example: <!ELEMENT from (#PCDATA)> |
Elements declared with the category keyword ANY, can contain any combination of parsable data:
<!ELEMENT element-name ANY> Example: <!ELEMENT note ANY> |
Elements with one or more children are declared with the name of the children elements inside parentheses:
<!ELEMENT element-name (child1)> or <!ELEMENT element-name (child1,child2,...)> Example: <!ELEMENT note (to,from,heading,body)> |
When children are declared in a sequence separated by commas, the children must appear in the same sequence in the document. In a full declaration, the children must also be declared, and the children can also have children. The full declaration of the "note" element is:
<!ELEMENT note (to,from,heading,body)> <!ELEMENT to (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT from (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT heading (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT body (#PCDATA)> |
<!ELEMENT element-name (child-name)> Example: <!ELEMENT note (message)> |
The example above declares that the child element "message" must occur once, and only once inside the "note" element.
<!ELEMENT element-name (child-name+)> Example: <!ELEMENT note (message+)> |
The + sign in the example above declares that the child element "message" must occur one or more times inside the "note" element.
<!ELEMENT element-name (child-name*)> Example: <!ELEMENT note (message*)> |
The * sign in the example above declares that the child element "message" can occur zero or more times inside the "note" element.
<!ELEMENT element-name (child-name?)> Example: <!ELEMENT note (message?)> |
The ? sign in the example above declares that the child element "message" can occur zero or one time inside the "note" element.
Example: <!ELEMENT note (to,from,header,(message|body))> |
The example above declares that the "note" element must contain a "to" element, a "from" element, a "header" element, and either a "message" or a "body" element.
Example: <!ELEMENT note (#PCDATA|to|from|header|message)*> |
The example above declares that the "note" element can contain zero or more occurrences of parsed character data, "to", "from", "header", or "message" elements.
From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)