Lock users to specific DTD?

[ptc-923889]

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!)

[bibach]

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!)
>
> ----------

[ClayHelberg]

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