RE: Use of attributes

> From: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
> [mailto:ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Clemm, Geoff
> Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 7:50 PM
> To: DeltaV
> Subject: RE: Use of attributes
>
>
>    From: Lisa Dusseault [mailto:lisa@xythos.com]
>
>    To be consistent with how 2518 does PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, etc. I would
> have
>    expected:
>      <D:supported-live-property-set xmlns:D="DAV:"
>    xmlns:x="http://www.xythos.com/schemas/StorageServer"/>
> 	<D:getcontentlength/>
> 	<x:quota/>
> 	...
>      </D:supported-live-property-set>
>
>    But the DeltaV draft requires the following syntax:
>      <supported-live-property-set>
> 	<supported-live-property name="getcontentlength" namespace="DAV:"/>
> 	<supported-live-property name="quota"
>    namespace="http://www.xythos.com/schemas/StorageServer"/>
> 	...
>      </supported-live-property-set>
>
>    Is there some merit to doing things this way that isn't immediately
>    obvious?
>
> This was done at the request of the folks who care about syntactic
> validation (e.g. DTD or XML-Schema).  It is expected that this
> report will be extended with other interesting metadata about the
> supported live properties (e.g. DAV:is-computed).  By using the
> DAV:supported-live-property node, this can be declared as:
>
> <!ELEMENT supported-live-property (is-computed?)>

That could have easily been done by adding it in the form of:

	<x:quota xmlns:D="DAV:" D:is-computed="true" />

>    Aside from consistency and stylistic considerations, the syntax in the
> draft
>    is just plain broke. The DTD for supported-live-property set hardwires
> the
>    namespace to DAV:
>
>    <!ATTLIST supported-live-property namespace NMTOKEN "DAV:">
>
> This does not hardwire the namespace to be "DAV:", it just specifies
> that the "DAV:" is the default if no explicit namespace attribute is
> specified.

Now that you mention that: this breaks reporting of live properties that
actually happen to be in no namespace at all (no, I wouldn't suggest using
things like that, but ...).

I assume that currently no server uses DTDs to validate. Which raises the
question how they should process element where the attribute is missing:

a) assuming the property is in the DAV: namespace,
b) assuming it's in no namespace.

For consistency, I'd prefer b). If it's a), that should be clearly stated
somewhere (and a way to report properties in "no" namespace -- such as
namespace="" -- should be documented).

Julian

Received on Sunday, 5 August 2001 14:04:07 UTC