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

Aah. Yes. I saw that in the XML rec, but it didn't quite filter through my
head fast enough.

Charles

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Pawson, David wrote:

  >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 
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Wednesday, 24 February 1999 11:45:30 UTC