Re: XHTML 1.1 validator rejects xml:space attributes

olivier Thereaux wrote:
>
> Hi Shane,
>
> On Oct 11, 2007, at 01:17 , Shane McCarron wrote:
>
>> The XHTML 2 Working Group suggests that you try very hard to NOT 
>> include our DTDs directly in your distribution, instead referring to 
>> the authoritative locations for them.  That way, when we make fixes 
>> like these, it will just work for your users.
>
> DTD traffic has to be the single most expensive and problematic issue 
> in terms of w3c infrastructure, and w3c as a whole (incl the TAG) has 
> been promoting the use of caching and cataloguing to alleviate that 
> situation. As a result, I am reluctant to have the markup validator 
> fetch a DTD (or, in the case of modular specs, a dozen) every time a 
> validation request is made (that's a couple million times a day, IIRC).
Independent of this issue.... it is certainly reasonable to have the 
validator use locally cached versions of things referenced by documents 
being validated.  Makes sense to me.  If it were me I would use some 
simplistic caching algorithm and Cache::File to keep frequently used 
things around and only check to ensure they are up to date rarely.  I 
would not embed initial versions - the first fetch should populate the 
local cache.  Might be too hard to set up given how the DTD-based 
validator works... If you are interested, I would be happy to look into 
it for you.
>
> Are these DTDs changing so often that it would be a burden for the 
> XHTML WG to drop a mail to www-validator saying "the DTD for foo has 
> been updated, please update your catalogs"? Remember, readers on this 
> list include not just developers for the W3C's validator, but pretty 
> much all of them.
It is surely not a burden.  We manage a great number of DTDs, and many 
of those are under active development right now.  I am not sure how 
often you can handle updates, nor when it would be appropriate to update 
something as public as the validator.   Also, as you point out the new 
XHTML 1.1 is not a REC, we didn't think it would make sense to embed it 
in something that gets redistributed and installed all over the world.  
I don't think there is a good answer as to how to deal with upgrades 
like this; we need some rules.
>
> That said, if a DTD is changing a lot for a period of time, we could 
> remove it temporarily, upon your request, from the validator's 
> catalog, but that should not be systematic.
>
I would be happy to work with you on developing a process that makes 
sense for all groups; surely this cannot be unique to XHTML.
>
>> Having said that, yes - the XHTML 1.1 DTD has been updated in a 
>> working draft that will soon go to PER status.  That draft fixes the 
>> problem with xml:space and a couple of other minor issues.  It is 
>> 100% backward compatible with the previous version.
>
> Thank you for the info. When is the PER expected to be published?
The PER is dependent on an update to M12N (which will ALSO force updates 
to the modules that you are likely caching).  M12N has a CR transition 
call soon.  I don't know when in the W3C document lifecycle we can start 
the PER review if it is dependent upon another spec...


-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2007 02:19:06 UTC