present invention two different tables for the schemabranch codes sbc are now introduced for each node with the objective of reducing the length of the code for positioning within the document by comparison with that in the iso iec draft mentioned above table a contains only the elements of complex type that is those elements which can have child elements the other table contains all the elements i e including the attributes and the simple type elements it should be noted that no sbc needs to be reserved for the path termination the schemabranch codes in the two tables are referred to below as sbc a and sbc b respectively the complete path is in turn formed by chaining together tbcs with all the tbcs except the last being formed using sbc a and where applicable the appropriate position codes the end of the first part of the path created using table a is signaled by a termination code for example all bits 1 there then follows exactly one tbc the schemabranch code for which is taken from table b it should be noted that in the method according to the present invention the termination code also must be sent if an attribute or a simple type element is addressed as the length of the schemabranch codes depends on the number of possible elements.