RE: DTD for supported-method-set (3.1.3)

   From: Julian Reschke [mailto:julian.reschke@greenbytes.de]

   > From: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
   > [mailto:ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Clemm, Geoff
   > Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 6:05 AM
   > To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
   > Subject: RE: DTD for supported-method-set (3.1.3)
   >
   > ...
   >
   >    b) Do we agree that the attribute name is not qualified (so it is in
no
   >    namespace)?
   >
   > The intention was for every element and attribute type to be declared
   > in the DAV: namespace, so the attribute "name" is declared in the
   > DAV:namespace, as is the element type "supported-method-set" and
   > the element type "supported-method".

Actually, in looking at the DAV:expand-property example, we clearly did
not intend for the attributes to be in the DAV: namespace (since they
are not qualified with "D:" to indicate they are in the DAV: namespace).
So I'll change that to "the intention was for every element to be declared
in the DAV:namespace and every attribute to be in the default namespace".

   Well.

   First of all, this is a very uncommon way to use attributes. In
   vocabularies like XSLT, XSL-FO or XHTML, attributes are declared
   with no namespace and rely on their context. Namespaced prefixes
   usually only appear in vocabularies where the attributes can appear
   on elements in other namespaces, such as xml:lang (XML itself),
   xlink:role (XLink) or xsi:type (XML Schema).

OK, I'm sold (:-).

   So besides that this would be very strange, the DTD fragment
   doesn't specify it (well, it can't really, because DTDs do not know
   about namespaces).

Yeah, that doesn't really argue either way, since as you say, 
DTD fragments cannot declare anything about namespaces.

   So my suggestion would be

   a) to define that the name attribute is in no namespace,

I'll go with that.

   b) fix the DTD fragment,

I wouldn't do that (since it would be a non-standard usage of DTDs).

   c) add examples to this (and maybe other) definitions. (Sorry).

I'll try to squeeze in an example of the DAV:supported-method-set
property in the final editing pass.

   >    In retrospective, just defining properties in terms of DTDs --
   > while DTDs
   >    can by definition not be normative for WebDAV (*) -- isn't a good
idea.
   >    (*) DTDs can not properly capture namespace information.
   > Neither can they
   >    adequately model the extensible model defined in section C.2.2
   > of RFC2518
   >
   >
(<http://www.greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2518.html#rfc.section.C.2.2>).
   >
   > I'll let the folks that like DTD's respond to that (:-).

   Did I open a can of worms? DTDs can not be used for normative
descriptions
   of XML vocabularies like WebDAV's. Even the W3C doesn't attempt to do
that.

Well, if it's a can of worms, it's one we inherited from 2518 (:-).
I did at one time suggest we purge DTD's from the spec, but this was
not something the working group supported.

Cheers,
Geoff

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 10:22:23 UTC