xml:base and IRI

Hello XML Core,

It is good to see that the updating of XLink to 1.1, which includes
updating references to the current IRI specification, is progressing
well.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xlink11-20050707/

On a related issue, xml:base (which XLink and other specifications will
use when a relative URI is specified) also has old references to URI
(RFC 2396). This means that the processing of relative URIs (or IRIs) is
theoretically unspecified (although in practice fairly clear, as long as
xml:base takes an anyURI which is, in effect, an IRI).
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlbase-20010627/

It would be cleaner, therefore, to have an update to xml:base to fix
this. The changes should be fairly modest:

- update references to RFC 2396 so they point to RFC 3986
- update references to "a URI or a strong of characters which when
processed by the following algorithm...." to "IRI" and point to RFC 3987
- add some more examples
- check that any terms whose meaning was clarified from RFC 2396 to RFC
3986 are still being correctly used.

It seems to me that many of the text changes made to XLink 1.0 to
produce XLink 1.1 could be reused to update xml:base also.

In addition, the Architecture of the World Wide Web, vol 1 is written in
terms of 'RFC 2396bis' which is what RFC 3986 was called before it got
an RFC number. Therefore, updating xml:base in this regard would also
bring it into alignment with Web Architecture.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215/

An update to xml:base would have the additional advantage that
specifications which use it (such as XHTML 1.x, XHTML 2, SVG 1.x, and so
on) would immediately benefit as they themselves move to using IRIs
either directly or via XLink 1.1.

Reviewing the references in xml:id, the reference to XML second edition
could be updated to third edition at the same time, and perhaps a
mention of XML 1.1 added.

-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG

Received on Wednesday, 5 October 2005 17:32:16 UTC