Some important questions about document profiles and their use

Hi all, 

 After reading the XHTML Modularization, XHTML 1.0 Language and an other 
 variant vocabulary (XHTML Basic), i ended up with several important 
 questions that will definetly help in defining vocabularies out of
 a set of modules. 

 I first give my understanding of what a module and a profile is : 

 1) modules are independent descriptions of a functionality decribed
    using elements and attributes. A module defines a sub-vocabulary
    that can be used combined with other modules in the framework of
    a profile.

  2) A profile (as defined in xhtml and smil) is a collection of modules 
    particular to an application domain or language. For example,
    the SMIL profile corresponds to the collection of modules that 
    make up the SMIL language.

    The profile is defined formally by a DTD, which is made up of
sub-DTD's
    from the modules. It is a sort of collection of sub-DTD's whith a
URI
    in the header to identify the namespace of that particular language
defined
    by the DTD.

 My questions follows :

 The previous architecture works if the user agent (the client)
understands
 all of the language ie. The entire SMIL Boston Vocabulary. 

 If the user agent, say does not implement one of the modules, the
transition module
 for example, how does it explain to the server that he speaks only SMIL
minus
 the transition vocabulary. And how does it know from the document
description
 returned or served from the server is encoded in smil but without 
 transition elements. Does all this hapen magically at the content
negociation
 level.

 Another usecase is user agents implementing vocabularies poorer than
those in
 the modules. For example, think of a handheld device that needs to use
 the smil timing module but without the event-based synchronization. In
this
 case how the new vocabulary is defined, identified and negociated
between
 the user agent and the server. Do we have to define a new module in
that
 family ??

 1) How de we define all document profiles. How and where do we qualify
this
   profiles. It feels like it can be something like :
       
         Document Profile= SMIL Profile - Transitions

   or
         Document Profile= Timing + Transitions (for a different
profile) 
          

 2) How do we define a variant of a module poorer than the "standard
one"

        Document Profile = SMIL Timing - (Event Based elements and
attributes)

 I appreciate any answer to these questions as they will help in
defining 
 SMIL profiles.

 Nabil Layaida

 SYMM Working Group

Received on Monday, 7 February 2000 11:45:33 UTC