Re: A17: keep or drop entities?

James Clark wrote: 

> 
> Some SGML parsers already allow the document entity to be spread out of
> multiple files; for example, with nsgmls, you could say
> 
>  nsgmls header.sgm Intro.sgm Docs.sgm Elements.sgm Entities.sgm
> 
> and the effective document entity would be the concatenation of all files
> specified as arguments.  If your XML parser doesn't do this, you can just
> use "cat".   Whether it's something simple like file concatenation or
> something complex like a OO database, I think ways can be found to solve
> this sort of problem outside of XML.
> 

Excactly.

Below is the text of a message I posted while the list server was down.
__________________

I think the first version of XML should not support entities. Successive 
versions should.

For those using SGML and entities, entity resolution and inclusion can be 
performed on the server side. XML clients would expect "complete" documents just 
as today's HTML clients expect complete documents. This has proven an acceptable 
model for many documents and applications. Entity substitution on the client 
side is not in great demand but extensible markup is.

Let's first include the features required to accomplish the leap from 
one-size-fits-all markup to extensible markup. Once that is accomplished, we can 
add other useful features that we all know, love, and use.

One final comment on this. If we require general entity support initially, it 
will be necessary to specify, design, develop, implement, and distribute a 
Web-based entity resolution mechanism. Agreement on such a mechanism has proven 
difficult in the past and may again. Our energies are better spent on other 
issues.

Received on Tuesday, 8 October 1996 12:45:41 UTC