Re: Information components (DTD fragments)

[Peter Murray-Rust:]

| I would like to develop a protocol (?manifesto :-) for the use of
| WF-XML information components ('tagsets', 'DTD fragments') and hope that
| I can explain my position here.  I feel sufficiently confident of the
| potential value of this that I am announcing (later today) the Virtual
| School's (practical) offering in this area, an 8-week virtual course on:
| 	"Scientific Information Components using Java and XML"
| at the VSMS site.  I apologise for 'advertising', but the spinoff 
| will be that all the discussion will be publicly archived and therefore may 
| be of benefit to the members of this group and the ERB.

This is an extremely important topic, and under the heading of
"lexicons" (suggested by Tim Berners-Lee) is already down on a long
list of things we will get to *after* we take care of the business at
hand.  The business at hand was summarized by Tim Bray on behalf of
the ERB in a message dated April 30.  I have reproduced that message
below for the benefit of anyone who's forgotten it.

We are here in order to create specific deliverables.  To do that we
need to take things in an order of priority and to stay focused on the
tasks at hand.  So as interesting and ultimately important as this
subject is, I must ask you either to suspend this discussion or take
it elsewhere, the obvious candidate for that being comp.text.sgml.

Whatever eventually comes out of this discussion, it does not belong
to XML 1.0 but to some future version.  The ERB has set a goal of new
1.0 xml-lang and xml-link drafts by July 1.  Please confine your
postings to contributions that will enable us to meet that goal.

For example, has anyone completely thought through the implications of
xml-link for implementors?  Are all you would-be implementors
completely satisfied that you can have complete extended xml-link
functionality up and running soon?  If so, why aren't you working on
it?  If not, why aren't you complaining?

Jon


 Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 20:20:40 -0700
 To: W3C SGML Working Group <w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org>
 From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
 Subject: News from the ERB

 The ERB has somewhat recovered from the run-up to the W6 conference and
 has been considering its future work items.  Meeting today, April 30,
 the ERB decided to approach decision-making in the following order:

 1. Error handling
 2. Stylesheet linkage (simple and full-function modes)
 3. Unfinished work on XML-link

 Once this has been finished (shouldn't take too long) we will consider
 in what order we should attack the near-infinite number of items on
 the input stack.  One obvious candidate is the original phase 3
 work item, the specification of a stylesheet facility suitable for
 delivery SGML over the Web.

 There are also a large number of new work items, all of them clearly of
 real importance, that would reward consideration.  These include:
  - strong data typing
  - data declaration facilities beyond the DTD
  - linkage to behaviors

 In related news, we also agreed to aim for new XML-lang and XML-link
 drafts by July 1.

 Cheers, Tim Bray
 tbray@textuality.com http://www.textuality.com/ +1-604-708-9592

Received on Sunday, 4 May 1997 15:51:56 UTC