Re: comments on last-call draft of DOM Level 3 Validation (very late)

Your personal comments should have been covered by
the DOM WG's response sent last Friday:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2003AprJun/0048.html

If not, feel free to send email by June 4.

Thanks,
Ben

"C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" wrote:

> My profuse apologies for sending in a last-call review so
> long after the deadline for comments.   In the hopes that
> they may still be of use, however, I append some comments
> on the spec.
>
> These are personal comments for which no other individual
> or organization bears responsibility.  (I have also forwarded
> them to the task force working to prepare a review of the spec
> for the XML Schema WG, so some of them may be repeated if
> and when that WG sends its comments.)
>
> My reading of the spec has been quick and necessarily
> cursory in places; please bear with me if I have simply
> misunderstood something.
>
> -C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
>
> Notes on DOM Level 3 Validation
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20021008/DOM3-Val.html
>
> Note: I am assuming the intention is for this API to support
> validation using XML Schema.  If this is not the intention, my one
> comment is that it should be.  If it is the intention, then I have
> more.
>
> The feature identifier "VAL-DOC" is troublesome; surely names used to
> identify features of this kind should be namespace-qualified and in
> some W3C namespace.
>
> Section 1.3, Interface DocumentEditVAL, definition of attribute
> continuousValidityChecking:  for 'if free' read 'is free'.
>
> Interface NodeEditVAL, method isNodeValid.  My first reaction is to
> say this should return something other than a boolean, to deal better
> with the variety of results that can come back from schema-validity
> assessment.  (See
> http://www.w3.org/People/cmsmcq/2001/validation-results and
> http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/06/validity-outcomes for overviews.)
>
> It occurs to me, though, that perhaps it's just a question of calling
> the method with the right parameters.  If we use 'va' for [Validation
> attempted] and 'v' for [Validity], we have for node n:
>
>    va='full' v='valid' iff n.isNodeValid(true,STRICT_VALIDITY_CHECK)
>    va='full' v='invalid' iff not n.isNodeValid(true,STRICT_VALIDITY_CHECK)
>    va='partial' v='valid' iff ... what?
>    va='partial' v='invalid' iff ... what?
>    va='partial' v='notKnown' iff we haven't run n.isNodeValid() but we
>         have validated at least one descendant
>    va='none' v='notKnown' iff we haven't run n.isNodeValid()
>
> It's not clear to me how the parameters 'deep' and
> 'wFValidityCheckLevel' should be used to inquire about
> schema-validity.  I think an explicit discussion of how these
> parameters relate to the values in the PSVI would be very helpful.
>
> Interface ElementEditVAL, attribute definedElementTypes -- it's not
> clear why this attribute is limited to elements which are in the same
> namespace as the element whose attribute this is.  (That is what it
> says, isn't it?)  It is not the case that parents in a given namespace
> can have only children from the same namespace; neither DTDs nor
> schemas makes such a restriction, nor should they.
>
> Methods isElementDefined and isElementDefinedNS: these seem to need
> further elaboration to explain how they work if the element is
> declared local to some complex type: it may not be defined in the
> given namespace, and even if it's in the namespace, it might collide
> with a top-level element in the same namespace and of the same name;
> is that likely to cause a problem?
>
> Glossary: definition of 'partially valid' should probably say whether
> the children need to be valid or partially valid or not, in order for
> the parent to be partially valid.  (We assume they only have to have
> the prescribed names, but it would be nice to be sure.)
>
> Glossary: 'partially valid' is defined, but 'strict validity' is also
> used as a technical term and lacks a definition.  It should be
> defined.

Received on Tuesday, 27 May 2003 19:27:02 UTC