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1-Visitor
October 14, 2011
Question

Lock users to specific DTD?

  • October 14, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 768 views

Hi all,


We've found that some of our more technically adventurous authors have been creating local copies of XML DTDs (faster if working from home than logging on over VPN). This is highly undesirable for obvious reasons. Given some people's apparent readiness to hack the doctype declaration to point to their own copy of the DTD, is there anything we can do to prevent this?


How can we, for example, give authors read access to the DTD on the network drive without at the same time giving them the ability to copy it (Read=Copy)? As XML files are "just text" they are eminently hackable? Since they can always go outside Arbortext I guess this cannot be solved by any scripting solution? Binary XML, anyone? (just kidding!)

    2 replies

    1-Visitor
    October 14, 2011
    I'd suggest you look at the "zipped customizations" feature of
    Arbortext Editor, which allows the custom directory to be maintained
    as a Zip file on a network location, which Editor will automatically
    pull down and unpack locally when it has been updated.  This way, your
    authors should always have the right DTD (and related files), but with
    far fewer network performance issues and with the ability to work even
    if network connectivity is temporarily unavailable.

    Hopefully, this will meet the needs of both you and your authors.

    -Brandon 🙂


    On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 4:59 AM, John Hanratty
    <john.hanratty@lexisnexis.co.uk> wrote:
    > Hi all,
    >
    > We've found that some of our more technically adventurous authors have been
    > creating local copies of XML DTDs (faster if working from home than logging
    > on over VPN). This is highly undesirable for obvious reasons. Given some
    > people's apparent readiness to hack the doctype declaration to point to
    > their own copy of the DTD, is there anything we can do to prevent this?
    >
    > How can we, for example, give authors read access to the DTD on the network
    > drive without at the same time giving them the ability to copy it
    > (Read=Copy)? As XML files are "just text" they are eminently hackable? Since
    > they can always go outside Arbortext I guess this cannot be solved by any
    > scripting solution? Binary XML, anyone? (just kidding!)
    >
    > ----------
    18-Opal
    October 14, 2011
    Hi John-



    If you are using Arbortext 5.4 or later, you might try using a zipped
    custom directory. With that approach, the entire custom directory is
    posted to a network location as a single ZIP file. When a user starts
    Editor, it downloads the zip file and expands it in their cache
    directory, so from that point on all access is local. (It only downloads
    the ZIP file if it is newer than the cached custom files in use the last
    time Editor ran.)



    This won't prevent users from hacking the DTD if they are determined to
    do so, but it would remove one of the primary motivations for them to be
    tempted.



    To find out more about it, see "help 17122", "Deploying zipped
    customizations".



    HTH



    --Clay



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML