ARIA Module 404 not found on W3C server, XML declaration missing in DTD

Dear PFWG,

1) in ARIA 1.0 the URI of the ARIA DTD Module [1] is specified as 
http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/aria-attributes.mod, alas that throws a 
404 error.

However, the URI that is used in the sample DTD [2] is listed as 
http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/aria-attributes-1.mod (note the "-1"), 
it's also 404 not found.

Thus the sample DTD is unable to load the module, and it does no 
validate using a validator such as the DTD validator from Validome.[3] 
The non-validating DTD results in non-validating XHTML pages.

By the way the outdated module URIs 
http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/aria-qname.mod and 
http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/xhtml11-aria-base.dtd still work (but 
their HTTP MIME type header is "text/plain", not "application/xml-dtd"), 
so I suppose the new modules should be available as well.


2) The ARIA RDF namespace [4] URI is still a placeholder, so even if 
validators would be able to validate a XHTML page based on the RDF 
Schemas, the resource would be unavailable. Whereas the Role namespace 
duly serves a RDF document.[5]

These issues are important because a valid DTD or RDF Schema is crucial 
for implementation and validation, and therefore for spreading ARIA 
among standards aware developers who wish their pages to validate. They 
are the early adopters, but they will be deterred by non-validating pages.


3) Just a side note, but since a DTD is XML, shouldn't it have a XML 
declaration <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> at the beginning?


Thanks,
   Martin


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#xhtml_mod
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#xhtml_dtd
[3] http://www.validome.org/grammar/validate/
[4] http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/
[5] http://www.w3.org/2005/01/wai-rdf/GUIRoleTaxonomy

-- 
Martin Kliehm
Senior Frontend Engineer

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Received on Friday, 14 November 2008 12:49:10 UTC