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copied!<p>The issue of attributes vs elements has been around for the better part of a decade and there is no right answer. Instead consider the differences and from that you should be able to decide which to use:</p> <ul> <li>There can be only one instance of an attribute although you can enforce this with elements using DTD or XML Schema;</li> <li>Attributes are unordered. Elements are not;</li> <li><p>Attributes lead to a more concise syntax if there are no children. Compare:</p> <p><page name="Sitemap"/></p></li> </ul> <p>to:</p> <pre><code><page> <name>Sitemap</name> </page> </code></pre> <p>I know which one I prefer;</p> <ul> <li>Not really relevant now since DTDs aren't used much (if at all) over XML Schema but I'll add it anyway: DTDs allow default values (implied) for attributes but no such mechanism for elements; and</li> <li>Elements, being elementss, can have children and attributes of their own. Attributes obviously cannot.</li> </ul> <p>So, from your example, your innermost <code><page></code> element has a URL attribute (although it's an image for some reason--perhaps a preview icon? If so the attribute name is misleading). A webpage only has one URL (generally) so that'd be a good example of something that could be an attribute.</p> <p>If on the other hand you wanted to list the images on the page, there could obviously be more than one so you'd need elements for that.</p> <p>But, in the end, most of the time there's no right or wrong answer and it's largely a question of style.</p>

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