Re: Ending DTD proliferation at the W3C

Michael,

your suggestion ignores a function of DTDs which, I feel, is still relevant: DTDs are vocabulary helpers.
Using a DTD you can declare implied attributes including implied namespaces.
That means that you can, together with a DTD, distribute much more readable XML sources.
The characters' entity names are another example of vocabulary helpers.

I agree DTDs are outdated for any form of validation and that this should be prevented.
I disagree that working groups should not publish DTDs anymore. Especially,  I believe that distributing DTDs along with XML documents collections is good practice.

I believe some of it is useful in the TR world. But… on this I am unsure.

paul


Le 13 janv. 2014 à 20:22, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> a écrit :

> In response to a suggestion[*] from Dan Appelquist on twitter, I'd like to
> ask that the TAG consider taking a position against further publication of
> DTDs in W3C TR space by any W3C working group.
> 
>  [*] https://twitter.com/torgo/status/422746987650220032
> 
> Specifically, I'd like for there to be a document from the TAG somewhere
> stating that:
> 
>  - Working groups should not include DTDs or portions from DTDs in any
>    form, even non-normatively, within any specifications they wish to
>    publish as Working Drafts or Notes in TR space.
> 
>  - Working groups should also not publish DTDs separate from specifications
>    in TR space, including not for the purpose of referencing the DTDs
>    within a specification nor for any other purpose; so for example, no
>    further DTDs should be made available in TR space similar to the way in
>    which http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd is made available there.
> 
>  - No current W3C draft specifications that contain or reference DTDs
>    should be allowed to transition to Candidate Recommendation, Proposed
>    Recommendation, or Recommendation.
> 
> The rationale for stopping publication of DTDs in TR space is that:
> 
>  - DTDs published in TR space risk being considered by the community to be
>    complete normative expressions of the document-conformance constraints
>    for a specification, even if they are labeled as non-normative.
> 
>  - DTDs as a formalism lack the power to express many document-conformance
>    constraints that can be stated in the prose of a specification. The
>    community should always first be reading the prose of the specifications
>    themselves in order to understand the conformance constraints the
>    specification states -- rather than relying on any accompanying DTD.
> 
>  - To the degree that it's useful for the W3C to publish schema formalisms
>    at all, DTDs as a schema formalism have been obsoleted for many years
>    now by Relax NG and W3C XML Schema (which even themselves are unable to
>    express many conformance constraints that can be stated in the prose of
>    a specification, but at least come closer than DTDs).
> 
> -- 
> Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike
>

Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2014 08:22:15 UTC