RE: Simple solution? Pub. Idents. vs URN.

> XML is not here to be a partisan of hypotheses about the way advanced 
> document processing ought to be done in the future; its goal is to specify
> a simple set of practices that (a) are comprehensible (b) are
> compliant with international standards and (c) work.

Within some (many!) systems, FPIs meet all of those goals.

 Paul Prescod

I disagree.  FPI do not qualify as "a simple set of practices".
Design goal number 4 for XML is "It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents." (according to the SGML '96 proceedings).    FPI violate that goal as well, as anyone who has pored through SP's code knows.

The Web has it's own ways to identify objects: let's use them (URLs now, URIs later).  Once XML is a success, then we can improve the Web based on our experiences in "standard" SGML implementations.

I think Tim Bray's a) b) and c) points are great and should be used as an acid test for discussions.  Can XML be work without FPI?  Yes.  Then, because they are not easily implementable, let's move on and define some linking syntax.

Received on Friday, 29 November 1996 09:26:03 UTC