- From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
- Date: Fri, 28 Mar 97 20:22:58 CST
- To: W3C SGML Working Group <w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org>
On Fri, 28 Mar 1997 18:40:55 -0500 Jon Bosak said:
> Could those who claim to be interested in seeing public
>identifiers implemented in XML please comment on Paul's proposal?
I think it's close to the Right Thing and thank Paul for his
draftsmanship. Having a rule for catalogs that says all XML processors
have to recognize PUBLIC entries and may skip the rest seems to me very
close to the &mntdv;, so I think we should build it in and declare
victory.
About finding the catalog, I favor a slightly different solution:
1 first, check for a local catalog (location and method of
specifying location are part of software installation, outside
scope of XML -- but XML processors should always allow for a
local catalog)
2 if the local catalog doesn't exist or doesn't have a matching
entry, then check the default catalog, which is
a the catalog named inside the document in an appropriate
element or PI or whatever, if the document
uses an architectural form or DTD known to the processor
b the catalog found by looking at the relative url "./catalog"
That is, provide a meaningful default even in the absence of a specific
instruction, just as RFC 1738 does (or at least the Fielding draft does)
in the case of Base URLs, and furthermore use basically the same rules
as RFC 1738: if there's specific instruction in the document, then
follow it. If not, use the location of the object itself, and look
'nearby'. The fact that Panorama works this way I regard as a clue that
(a) it works, and (b) it will be familiar to many potential early
adopters.
I think having a standard way to find catalogs is critical to
interoperability of XML processors, so I do want to specify it, though
Paul is correct that it is in some sense independent of using catalogs.
-CMSMcQ
(Oh, yes, for those who were puzzled, there's an implicit declaration of
<!ENTITY mntdv 'minimum needed to declare victory'>
before this text starts.)
Received on Friday, 28 March 1997 21:35:50 UTC