RE: Ignore Order while validating XSD

> Not being an XSD expert, maybe my question is "why can't the 
> content ordering possibilities be specified as a regex-like pattern?".

One of the criticisms of DTDs, which XSD attempted to address, was that DTDs
were written in a non-XML-like syntax which made it difficult for
applications to process the information (and difficult in many cases for
authors to remember the syntax). The thinking was that by using an XML-based
syntax, the data would be much more accessible; and some argued that
verboseness doesn't matter because authors would be working with specialized
tools rather than editing at the source level.

There is continued interested in defining a less verbose syntax. However,
the XML Schema WG is very stretched for resources.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/