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

> From: ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org
> [mailto:ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Clemm, Geoff
> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 4:22 PM
> To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
> Subject: RE: DTD for supported-method-set (3.1.3)
>
> ...
>
> 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".

Correction: not in the default namespace, in *no* namespace. Attributes do
not inherit a 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).

Correct. I should have said: either a) or b). a) was preferred anyway.

>    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.

Interesting.

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 10:28:59 UTC