RE: WAI IG CALL FOR REVIEW: New Authoring Tool Guidelines Working Draft

>2.1.2 Provide a reference within a document to the DTD which 
>has been used [Insert Period]

>as a URI. [suggest delete]
>
>Rationale:
>User Agents need to know how to interpret a document. Where, 
>for example,
>several XML varieties are used, such as the modular 
>HTML-in-XHTML which is
>being produced by W3C, or MathML/SMIL included in an HTML document,
>reference to the DTD is important for parsing it. Also, it is how a
>document is declared to be (for example) HTML 4.0 strict, and 
>interpreted
>as such, or MYHTML, which incorporates several extensions, and 
>for which
>the DTD is available at http://rubbish.com/my.dtd 
>
>The use of a non-standard DTD has implications about how the 
>content is to
>be represented, and it is therefore important to know what the 
>correct DTD
>is.
>
>In HTML this is done by including a DOCTYPE declaration. XML uses
>namespaces. These are techniques.
>
>Question: Does reference need to include a URI? I am not sure.
>

DaveP. HTML should use a standard SGML DOCTYPE declaration. 
With HTMl this would normally provide the url for the source (developers
should provide easy ways into this)
For XML, the standard, [23] defines format.
to include version, optionally encoding and or standalone declaration.
For the XML DTD, [75] defines the requirement for external ID, most likely
to be a SYSTEM then the url.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE DOCBOOK SYSTEM "http://www.davenport.org/docbook">
for documents 'home grown', the liklihood is that the DTD could/should be
internal and part of the document. Its this type of document that is most
likely
to cause trouble. I write it as I go along, don't bother with a DTD at all.
I can
produce a well formed, but not a type valid document.

The producers should realise the problem, its possible they could derive the
DTD along the way as its produced. An internal DTD would be a real bonus 
for such documents.

regards, DaveP

Received on Wednesday, 24 February 1999 03:11:04 UTC