Re: [Serialization] SCHEMA-E

Mary,

     In [1], you submitted the following comment on the Last Call Working 
Draft of XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization on behalf of the XML Schema 
Working Group:

<<
[E] [Section 2: Serializing Arbitrary Data Models] This section talks 
about
serialization of a "arbitrary" data model but in fact will fail for some
data model instances. In addition, section 4 implicitly adds additional
constraints on the data model (by putting constraints on the serialized
form) without making it clear what those constraints are.

Suggested changes are,

- Change title of section 2 to Normalization.
- Be clearer about actual goal (in particular: to serialize to well formed
XML? to serialize to XML in such a way as to ensure 1:1 roundtrippability?
other?).
- List explicitly the conditions for successful serialization (and/or
successful serialization to Well Formed XML, and/or successful 
serialization
to XML which when schema-validated will produce the same data model
instance).

Section 4  (XML Output Method)  does state:
   "The xml output method outputs the data model as an XML entity that 
must
   satisfy the rules for either a well-formed XML document entity or a
   well-formed XML external general parsed entity, or both, unless the
   processor is unable to satisfy those rules due to either serialization
   errors or the requirements of the character expansion phase of
   serialization, as described in 3 Serialization Parameters."

It is not clear what happens when there are problems (when "the
processor is unable to satisfy those rules"): failure? output of
non-WF XML?
>>

     Thanks to you and the working group for this comment.  The XSL and 
XML Query Working Groups discussed your comment.

     Regarding the first point, the working groups agreed.  The title will 
be changed to "Sequence Normalization"

     Regarding the second point, the goal is to serialize well-formed XML 
that reflects the content of the input sequence to the extent possible. We 
will add a statement to that effect.

     Regarding the third point, in answer to the question as to what 
happens when "those rules" can't be 
satisfied, we will clarify the cited text by changing it to the following:

<<
The xml output method outputs the instance of the data model as an XML 
entity that must satisfy the rules for either a well-formed XML document 
entity or a well-formed XML external general parsed entity, or both.  A 
serialization error results if the serializer is unable to satisfy those 
rules, except for contents modified by the character expansion phase of 
serialization, as described in 4 Phases of Serialization, which may result 

in the serial output being not well-formed rather than a serialization
error.  If a serialization error results, the processor must signal the
error.
>>

     However, describing the conditions under which serialization to XML 
will result in the same data model instance when schema-validated would 
not be practical; because of implementation-defined issues, etc., the list 
would be open ended.  The working groups decided to make no change to 
Serialization in response to this part of the comment.

     May I ask you to confirm that this response is acceptable to the 
Schema Working Group?

Thanks,

Henry [On behalf of the XSL and XML Query Working Groups]
[1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2004Feb/0265.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
Henry Zongaro      Xalan development
IBM SWS Toronto Lab   T/L 969-6044;  Phone +1 905 413-6044
mailto:zongaro@ca.ibm.com

Received on Tuesday, 21 September 2004 19:14:51 UTC