- From: Paul Grosso <paul@arbortext.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 06:19:00 -0500
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 09:25 1997 06 11 +0100, Martin Bryan wrote: >If we use the notation concept for lexical typing of element contents (which >I would like) how could we ensure portability of the specifications? If the >rules are defined in something identified by a URL must that object return a >Java applet that can be used to validate the contents of the element? If so, >how can users control the applet? (For example, how can I say that I want >the applet I just retrieved from the US to display the date in UK >day/month/year format rather than its default month/day/year format?) If we prefix element names with some "namespaceid:" thing, then we have accomplished the syntactic "uniquification" of names in the document instance without any mapping of the namespaceid bits to URIs. By mapping the namespaceid to URIs, we have now accomplished global uniquification. That's all I think something like the XML spec would have to say. All other typing (lexical or otherwise) is an orthogonal issue that might be addressed by some XML-data-typing spec, but that is true for both the old fashioned single namespace DTD as well as the multiple namespace problem, so let's not mix data typing issues with namespaces issues. The URI to which a namespaceid is associated doesn't have to do or return anything. It doesn't even need to resolve to an actual physical thing (though it may well make sense for it to resolve to some DTD or other set of declarations)--it just provides a globally unique naming scheme. Perhaps my suggestion to use a notation declaration to map a name to a URI is confusing the issue. Forget the fact that we all think that notation has something to do with data typing--I don't believe such an association is required by 8879's notation declaration--and just look at the notation declaration as mapping a name that is local to an instance into a structured name that is globally unique (i.e., a URI). Consider that "namespaceid:foo" just says that the name foo comes from the namespace identified by the URI to which "namespaceid" is mapped and forget data typing at this level. paul
Received on Wednesday, 11 June 1997 07:19:40 UTC