Re: The furore over PUBLIC

In message <199703290111.AA14559@mail.crl.com> Joe English writes:
[...]
> 
> That is a good example.  Along those lines, I believe that the
> required minimum support for PUBLIC identifiers should be:
> 
>      "XML processors must supply to the application the PUBLIC ID
>       of any entities for which one is specified (including the
>       DTD entity)."
> 
> That's it.  No attempt at resolution is required, although
> processors are of course free to do so if they like.
> 

My view concurs completely with Joe's.  I'd like to emphasise the critical
importance of a DTD (and hopefully other components) having *names* even
if their resolution is not algorithmic.  In our community and I suspect 
many others there is an extremely effective method of name resolution - 
human <- - -> human communication on the WWW.  This is not facetious.  If I send
a molecular scientist a document of mime type text/xml containing:
<?XML VERSION="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE CML PUBLIC "-//CML//DTD CML V1.0//EN">
<CML>...</CML>
what will happen?  If they know all about XML and CML, they'll have a system
set up to deal with it.  If they don't, they'll post something to
chemime@ic.ac.uk asking "what does this mean? and what do I do?".  They will
be told (I hope :-)  "this a new file of type CML.  You'll probably need
to install a CML browser (NB an XML browser is unlikely to be very much 
value) and you get it from http://www.venus.co.uk/omf/cml.  BTW you may
need to configure your browser to accept files of type text/xml in future,
but all the instructions are at...".  Over a few months at most, people
would install the appropriate server- and client-side files and other resources.
There are a large number of groups in our discipline who are keen to see 
this sort of interoperability and many home pages have instructions or
pointers.

In time, the FPI might become more unique.  The sorts of bodies that might 
oversee CML would be IUPAC (the International Union of Pura and Applied
Chemistry) or some equivalent Learned Chemical Society.  Name collisions
would be minimal.

So all I'm asking for is a name, though a working catalog would be a bonus
for trouble-free installation :-)

	P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust, domestic net connection
Virtual School of Molecular Sciences
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/

Received on Saturday, 29 March 1997 05:31:12 UTC