Moving XML 1.0 5e forward: suggestions arising from the Call for Review

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We got largely positive responses to the Call for Review from the
membership, accompanied by two specific suggestions:

 1) - Appendix J would be better if it suggested that all names comply
      with normalization form C (<http://unicode.org/reports/tr15/>)

    - Item 4 in Appendix J will have regional exceptions. A couple of
      regional exceptions are already listed, but those should be viewed
      as example exceptions rather than unique ones. For example, Eszett
      is still used in some Germanic regions (but not all)

 2) Even if the migration is desirable and the path is outlined, i'm
    still concerned with two points :

    1) Add a note or something concerning the fact that more document
       would be considered well formed from now on (between Revision 4
       and Rev 5), and give example of such documents.

    2) Outline remaining difference between Rev 5 and 1.1 (probably in
       XML 1.1)

    3) I think it would be a bad idea to not republish at the same
       time the specification "Namespaces in XML" which make a
       distinction between XML 1.0 documents and XML 1.0 with
       Namespaces documents. At the same time I would propose to allow
       namespace undeclaration in XML 1.0 with namespace which adds an
       unecessary burden on specification and implementation about
       this special case.

Seems to me we could easily take the first on board, it's clearly
editorial and helpful (although I'm no expert wrt the first sub-point
- -- is that right?)

The second is more problematic.  We could certainly add a sentence to
the 2nd real para. of the SotD, so that it would read:

 This fifth edition is not a new version of XML. As a convenience to
 readers, it incorporates the changes dictated by the accumulated
 errata (available at http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-V10-4e-errata) to the
 Fourth Edition of XML 1.0, dated 16 August 2006. In particular,
 erratum [E09] relaxes the restrictions on element and attribute
 names, thereby providing in XML 1.0 the major end user benefit
 currently achievable only by using XML 1.1.  As a consequence, many
 documents not well-formed according to previous editions of this
 specification are now well-formed.

Adding examples is a bit much, it seems to me, but we could.  I don't
think we should do anything wrt the second and third sub-points, but
we'll need to frame a reply to the member in question explaining
why. . .

There is also the further question of the public comments (about 
9 or 10).  One at least of these is more technical than political [1],
I think the rest are all accusations of Process violation.

I will start a DoC document, and we should start working through the
comments and deciding what to do about them.

ht

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-editor/2008JanMar/0000.html
- -- 
       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
                         Half-time member of W3C Team
      10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
                Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
                       URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
[mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam]
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Received on Wednesday, 10 September 2008 11:51:22 UTC