can an app use an XML Catalog to resolve an xinclude href value?

I just had an interest comment from someone:

 The XInclude spec is quite specific about where
 to look for an XInclude object if the URI for it
 is a relative path.  The path is relative to the
 location of the containing object.  There is no
 provision for any sort of search path to be used,
 so doing something like this is, strictly speaking,
 a violation of the XInclude spec.

Admittedly, the comment was about adding an
application-level "base URI" sort of thing, but it
got me to thinking about XML Catalogs.

Folks like Norm and me think that, in general, any
external identifier or URI reference could be 
"redirected" by an XML Catalog if one is being used.
I remember fiddling some words in the XML spec to 
make sure we accounted for this in the case of
external identifiers, though we I go back to the
spec, the "weasel words" are pretty subtle.

Assuming one wants to be able to use an XML Catalog 
to allow for redirection of things the application 
recognizes as external identifiers and URI references, 
do we have to write something special in each of our
XML-related specs that say anything about URIs?
Does XInclude as written imply that use of a catalog
to redirect the href attribute would be a violation
of the XInclude spec?

I'd be interested to hear what others think about this.

paul

Received on Thursday, 9 June 2005 20:07:51 UTC