Re: Inputs/outputs and auxiliary documents

/ Rui Lopes <rlopes@di.fc.ul.pt> was heard to say:
| Norman Walsh wrote:
|> Alex proposes, if I understood correctly, that we can solve both of
|> these problems if we make the auxiliary document relationship
|> explicit:
|
| I like this approach. However, I thought on two issues that may difficult it:
|
| 1) Imagine the following pipeline:
|
| <p:pipeline>
|   <p:input name="doc" />
|   <p:output name="fulldoc" />
|
|   <p:step name="xinclude">
|     <p:input name="document" label="$doc" />
|     <p:output name="output" label="$fulldoc" />
|   </p:step>
| </p:pipeline>
|

| If I know a priori which resources are referenced inside $doc, I may
| add p:input (or p:aux-input) elements to the pipeline step. What if
| I don't know these when defining the pipeline? A typical example
| relates to gluing operations (as opposed to chunking operations),
| either XInclude-based or doc() based (think feed aggregation).

Can you think of a practical example where

1. The pipeline generates the auxiliary documents,
2. A subsequent component includes them,
3. They don't flow over an input/output pipe between the components, and
4. You don't know the URIs of the relevant auxiliary documents?

I can't.

| 2) Chunking: how can we identify multiple outputs from chunking
| operations? Maybe referencing them on a regex-based label?

I expect the chunked output to flow through the input/output pipe. If
you can't predict the names of the chunks, how can you refer to them
by name later?

|> P.S. I actually think we should just use p:input/p:output for this
|> purpose. An p:input or p:output element with no name and an href
|> attribute would serve the purpose and wouldn't require a new element
|> name. They are, after all, inputs and outputs.
|
| I agree. Going a bit on detail, maybe marking the main input/output is
| preferred, as opposed to marking *each* auxiliar input/output.

My thinking was simply that what distinguishes a pipe from an aux
document is the presence of a name attribute.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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