Re: Moving on (was Re: URIs quack like a duck)

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:

> As I've noted with the inclusion and defaulting via DTD examples, I'm not
> sure that's sufficient.  (Unless of course relative URIs are barred...)

Well, the reason there hasn't been an Infoset draft for a while is the
issue we are discussing here.  Until it's resolved, there can't be one.
 
> It's a nice Platonic vision of a document, but I have to admit it doesn't
> feel (to me) like it has very close contact with the reality of 'what is an
> XML document?'

An XML document includes all its parts.  Some XML parsers are licensed to
ignore certain parts.
 
> 'as long as the subset is well documented'?  What does that mean?  The XML
> 1.0 exemptions for non-validating parsers are documented in the Last Call
> (12/20/99) draft, but I don't see any general exemption.

Oops, yes, that is the latest public draft.  I hereby prophesy that future
public drafts will define Infoset conformance thus: "Document which info items and
which properties you provide, and you conform".  In principle, even a refrigerator
will be able to conform by having a label that says "I don't provide any
Infoset information."

> That last exception is pretty frightening.  Is it justifiable?

It's more or less unavoidable.  Processors that don't read external entities
are required by XML 1.0 to report about the entity they didn't read, and the
Infoset provides a gimmick for doing so.  Processors that read external
general entities should never need to return such a gimmick.
 
-- 

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

Received on Friday, 2 June 2000 18:20:40 UTC