RE: XHTML documents + XSL (or CSS) stylesheets

From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
Subject: RE: XHTML documents + XSL (or CSS) stylesheets
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 10:04:13 -0400

I am sorry for my slow reply.  I have just recovered from my 
cold.

> I'd suggest that the reason you have no ideas is that this case wanders
> outside of our domain.

I agree.   It appears impossible to mention namespace-based 
dispatching without opening a large can of evil warms.

>  We went out of our way to make image/svg+xml
> possible, so using application/xml in this case doesn't provide enough
> information to a certain class of non-namespace-aware processors.  We're
> not writing about namespace-dispatching, though I suspect future work on
> identifying XML document types will have to.

Completely agreed.  We have tried to briefly mention the possibility
of using namespaces for dispatching, but I think we have open a can of
warms.  Let's avoid further delay.
 
> We're just discussing tools for creating appropriate containers, not the
> side effects of taking material that works well in one container and
> dropping it into a less-specific container.  I'd be happy to add a warning
> label to the spec that using text/xml and application/xml for all XML isn't
> really best practice, and that more specific labels using the suffix are
> generally more reliable.

Well, I think that this would open a different can of warms!

I would propose something like this:

  An XML document labelled as text/xml or application/xml may contain
  namespace declarations, stylesheet-linking PIs, and schema
  information among others.  For example, an XML document may have the 
  XHTML namespace and has a reference to a CSS stylesheet.  Such an
  XML document may be handled by application programs, each of which
  may relate to some of the namespaces, stylesheets, and schemata.  
  However, selection and invocation of such application programs is 
  outside the scope of this specification.

How do you feel?

I think that we should revise the latest I-D soon.

Cheers,

IBM Tokyo Research Lab / International University of Japan, Research Institute
MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)

Received on Wednesday, 26 July 2000 06:57:46 UTC