Re: XML catalog draft

> Your proposal sounds okay to me, except for one thing:
> 
> 1] if there is a processing instruction tht occurs before the DOCTYPE
>     line of the form <?-XML-CATALOG "system-id"?> then that is the system
>     identifier of the catalog and all other mechanisms are disregarded.
> 
> Why can't this be a relative URL?

It can if you like.  I didn't say it couldn't (I hope).
But it can also be absolute (complete).

You can't always work out the correct relative URL.

Example: given the URL
    http://www.w.com/docs/manuals/prod5/chp3/sec26.xml
it may be that this is being created on the fly by DynaWeb (say),
and that the CATALOG is actually
    http://www.w.com/docs/manuals/catalog.soc

Example: given the URL
    http://www.w.com/docs/overview.xml&lang=jp&vers=3&rep=docs/log
the correct thing to look for might be
    http://www.w.com/docs/catalog.soc&lang=jp&vers=3&rep=docs/log
or possibly just
    http://www.w.com/docs/catalog.soc
and not the "obvious"
    http://www.w.com/docs/overview.xml&lang=jp&vers=3&rep=docs/catalog.xml
(any or all of the ampersands (&) could be replaced with semicolons (;)
in the above example)

But it might also be on a different server, so it might be (say)
    http://catalog.w.com/docs/manuals/prod5/chp3/sec26/catalog.soc

So you have to be able to override the default mechanisms.

Panorama actually lacks this abiity right now, which is sometimes a problem.
There, I've given you all a competitive secret :-)

Lee

Received on Sunday, 9 February 1997 17:05:34 UTC