RE: How are correct, unambiguous results possible with implementation-defined XML pre-processing?

Chimezie,

Your analysis is excellent, but it makes a key assumption that is simply
incorrect, and seems to be the same key incorrect assumption that Murray
has made, as evidenced by the minutes from this week's GRDDL
teleconference:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-grddl-wg/2007May/att-0104/200
7-05-30-grddl-wg-minutes.html
[[
Murray: you cannot impose on someone to ingnore an XInclude in a
document. Noone has the authority to do it
]]

They key question is: Are the semantics of an XML document governed by
the root element namespace or are they not?  There is no gray area to
this question.  They either are or they are not.  I essentially asked a
more subtle version of this question in issue-dbooth-10, and DanC
reported that the WG had already asked the TAG this question and the
answer was yes:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-grddl-wg/2007May/0071.html
To be clear:

    Rule #1: The semantics of an XML document are governed 
    by the root element namespace of that document.

The point is that if rule #1 is true, then the GRDDL spec does not have
the authority to permit an XML document's semantics to be *altered* by
performing XML parsing that would be incorrect for that particular XML
document.

Similarly, regarding Murray's statement above, if rule #1 holds, then
the XML document's the root element namespace owner absolutely *does*
have the authority to define the meaning of the syntax
[[
    <xi:include href="http://example.org/do-not-expand" />
]]
within the context of that document.

Please note that there is a difference between an XML document and an
XML Infoset.  Your line of reasoning seems to be subtly altering rule #1
to: "The semantics of an XML Infoset are governed by the root element
namespace of that Infoset".  But GRDDL was not chartered for producing
RDF from an XML Infoset (though it is fine to do so as one *step* in
producing RDF from an XML document).  GRDDL was charterd for producing
RDF from an XML *document*.   The XML specification defines what
constitutes an "XML document":
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-xml-doc
and it is defined in terms of characters -- not infoset.  (And
incidentally, it corresponds to the WebArch notion of "representation"
-- *not* "information resource".)

David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software
+1 617 629 8881 office  |  dbooth@hp.com
http://www.hp.com/go/software

Received on Friday, 1 June 2007 17:25:03 UTC