Are complexTypes Elements? (drowning in xsd)

[Matthew.James.Briggs]

In xml schema tutorials I find a lot of examples that look like this

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<xs:element name="note">
  <xs:complexType>
    <xs:sequence>
  <xs:element name="to" type="xs:string"/>
  <xs:element name="from" type="xs:string"/>
  <xs:element name="heading" type="xs:string"/>
  <xs:element name="body" type="xs:string"/>
    </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

This is pretty easy to follow. In the musicxml.xsd document though, unless I'm missing something, the only xs:element objects defined are score-partwise and score-timewise.

There are many complexTypes in the specification, here's an example:

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<xs:complexType name="system-margins">
      <xs:annotation>
         <xs:documentation>[...]</xs:documentation>
      </xs:annotation>
      <xs:group ref="left-right-margins"/>
   </xs:complexType>

Is "system-margins" an element? If so, why is it not declared <xs:element name="system-margins">?

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what is an element in the specification since nothing is declared as an xs:element.

Help!

p.s. Currently I am only reading from musicxml.xsd and I am not referencing "attributes.mod", "barline.mod", etc. Maybe this is my problem? Is it required to read the .mod documents to define the music xml specification?

[Matthew.James.Briggs]

oops, I just realize that there are a lot of things declared as xs:element, just not many types are surrounded with <xs:element name="somename> </xs:element>

The crux of my question still stands though. I'm having trouble understanding what it means to have a complexType that is not surrounded by <xs:element></xs:element>.

[Matthew.James.Briggs]

I now see that a complexType can be used as the type="_" attribute of an xs:element.

Sorry for my nonsensical thread, I'm finding this very difficult to learn!

[Michael Good]

No problem - XSD is not the easiest to learn or to read. Relax NG schemas are a lot easier but alas are not as widely implemented in XML toolkit software, though that's better now than before.