Re: Comments on AERT (longish)

Thanks to Nick for pointing this out...

> http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/WD-AERT/ [...]
> Checkpoint 3.2 - Create documents that validate to published formal
> grammars

[Note that this should include XML Schemas as a means of publishing
syntactic constraints on a grammar.]

> 3.2.1 [priority 2] Check document for public text identifier

I fully agree with Nick's qualms here: there is no value whatsoever to be
gained from checking FPIs. AERTs could dereference the "system identifier"
by all means, but *no* Web system should base *anything* upon FPIs as they
are not unique (although they are defined as being so), and are nothing of
value. URIs are unique and form the basic foundations of the WWW; use them
instead. XHTML Families can have any mixture of FPI but there is no way of
validating its uniqueness. However, a SysID has only one single unique URI:
the most important part of the doctypedec because it points to the DTD.

Summary:-
FPIs don't say anything about a document structure
FPIs are dangerously undefined
SysIDs are unique URIs
SysIDs are dereferancable
SysIDs are the most important part of a doctypedec

Please, please, please consider changing this part of the WD!

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
http://infomesh.net/sbp/
"Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics."
   - Homer J. Simpson, BABF07.

Received on Saturday, 30 December 2000 16:33:24 UTC