Re: A thought about profiles

Liam R E Quin writes:

> Actually I also quoted,
> [[
> Its purpose is to provide a consistent set of definitions for use in
> other specifications that need to refer to the information in a
> well-formed XML document
> ]]
>
> note also, [[
> there is no requirement that the XML Information Set be made available
> through a tree structure
> ]]
>
> Use of "the infoset" to describe the glossary is fine; use of "the
> infoset of a document" as short for "the set of XML Information Items
> returned by a specific XML parser to an application" is fine. Talking
> about "the infoset" as if it were a data model defined by the infoset
> spec is going further than I'm comfortable with, as is suggesting that
> all XML parsers will/must return the _same_ set of information items for
> a given document.

For sure -- that's why we have the Profiles spec. at all, to extend
the utility of the Infoset spec's provision of a vocabulary by
packaging up likely subsets thereof.

> Having said that, maybe the right answer is to update the infoset spec
> to reflect that fairly common usage, and if we did that then your more
> formal definition could go there. The purpose of the infoset spec is to
> provide common definitions for other specs, so if we need a definition
> and it's not there, we should put it there.

Well, I'm happy that the Infoset spec. only goes as far as it does.

The Profiles spec. continues to talk in terms of information, which I
also think is correct.  I will try harder to make clear that what I'm
proposing is a slightly formalised story _about that information_, not
a data model.

> I think the difficulty I'm having is taking something abstract and
> somewhat vague and pinning down specific interpretations, even if those
> are/were the intended interpretations. Maybe it's because these days my
> head is too far inside XQuery and XSLT and XPath, which are XDM-based.
> Construction of an XDM instance is even vaguer than the infoset in some
> ways (through necessity) and more precise in others (for interop.).

Understood.

> Sorry for a long answer - it's philosophical and not technical, really. 

No apology necessary.

ht
-- 
       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
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Received on Thursday, 5 July 2012 18:11:01 UTC