XML Entity Manager

I am surprised that nobody has remarked on the woeful absence of discussion
of the entity management problem both in our goals document and here on
the list.  So... let me as usual advance the minimalist position:

XML offers only 4 kinds of external entities: the cross-product of 

(PUBLIC or SYSTEM) x (PCDATA or NDATA)

PCDATA/NDATA offer little for discussion, you either parse it or 
you don't, right?

SYSTEM entities, somebody at some point suggested outlawing them, and there
are certainly good reasons for that, but in XML I think we'd like easy stuff
to be easy, which SYSTEM does; it should be fenced around with stern warnings
about nonportability.

Which leaves PUBLIC.  Any chance of getting away with saying "all PUBLIC
entities are to be resolved by recourse to an SGML/Open Catalog, ref.
9401:1995"?

It is now appropriate for James or someone who has built these things to
step in and point out the woeful error of my ways.   But someone had to
kick it off.

Cheers, Tim Bray
tbray@textuality.com http://www.textuality.com/ +1-604-488-1167

Received on Saturday, 21 September 1996 09:41:26 UTC