Re: What to do given both SYSTEM and PUBLIC?

> (If the software does not know how to automatically resolve
> PUBLIC ID's -- which I suspect most software will not, since
> _nobody_ is sure how to do this yet -- then naturally it
> should try the SYSTEM ID first.  

I'm not sure how the latter follows from the former. If 
software does not know how to look up the public identifier,
it should use the system ID first and last. There is nothing
to specify.

But if software knows about both, I would urge that the public
identifier should be tried first.

a) It will probably be faster (since it will be a catalog lookup more
often than a network transaction using a still-under-development URN
protocol).

b) It provides opportunity for client-side overriding.

c) It could allow "smarter" caching (e.g. Document 1 says it needs
http://www.w3c.org/HTML.3.2.dtd and Document 2 says that it needs
http://www.htmlhelpers.org/html.3.2.dtd, but the two documents have the
same public identifier. The browser should know its already got the
right document).

 Paul Prescod

Received on Tuesday, 18 February 1997 19:46:28 UTC