Re: What to do given both SYSTEM and PUBLIC?

At 16:57 19/02/97 -0500, Liam Quinn wrote:
>John_Lavagnino@Brown.edu wrote:
>
>> To make clearer what I proposed on this topic just now:  let's keep
>> both SYSTEM and PUBLIC but drop the SGML option of mixing them. 
>
>That's sensible, although there would then be no standard XML way of
>processing a document with PUBLIC -- you'd have to use a resolution
>mechanism 

But you have to do this with all apps of SGML: it's what a PUBLIC id
is _for_.

>to get a CATALOG file and then a TD, and we haven't got one.

I still don't see the problem with being directive about this:

<!doctype foo PUBLIC "-//Foo, Inc//DTD Ab Fab Stuff//EN" 
        "ftp://ftp.foo.com/dtds/abfab.dtd">

means very simply: `This document is constructed according to this DTD: 
"-//Foo, Inc//DTD Ab Fab Stuff//EN". If you can resolve this with an 
algorithm or a catalog, because you've encountered it before and stored or 
cached it, or because your smart[ass :-] system already knows about it, 
fine, go right ahead and use it. If not, the file is here: 
"ftp://ftp.foo.com/dtds/abfab.xxx"', where "xxx" can be open-ended, but
we define some common ones "dtd" "ent" "socat" etc, so that authors with
complex or multi-file DTDs can provide sequenced catalog entries starting
with an SGML Declaration (whoops, we don't use them) and ending with the
last character entity file. Or whatever.

This is simple, straightforward, and will work. If an author has made up
a DTD and has no FPI, use SYSTEM and the app will _have_ to go fetch it.
If authors are careless enough to provide obscure FPIs and no system ids,
they deserve all the opprobrium they get :-)

///Peter
-- 
> to discover 1000s of internal "homepages" that grew overnight
> like magic mushrooms on a rich motherlode of corporate horseshit.
                          Copyright 1996, IBM.  All Rights Reserved

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 1997 18:19:36 UTC