- From: Christophe Strobbe <christophe.strobbe@esat.kuleuven.be>
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:14:30 +0200
- To: WAI-GL <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Hi Joe, At 19:16 17/06/2005, Joe Clark wrote: >>It is true that SGML does not define well-formedness, but if you say that >>a well-formed document is essentially "one that can unambiguously be >>parsed to create a logical tree in memory" (Jon Bosak, at >>http://www.isgmlug.org/n3-1/n3-1-18.htm), then you can apply this concept >>also to SGML. > >OK, so let me understand this: The Working Group is contemplating issuing >a vague and counterfactual guideline based on one person's blog posting, The new success criterion is not based on Jon Bosak's article; if you had that impression, that is entirely my fault (i.e. the wording of my response to Gez Lemon). I tried to identify criteria for well-formedness "after the fact". We now have 2 SCs at GL 4.1 L 1: one for SGML-based formats and one for all other formats. We may consider splitting the first one into two SCs: one that requires well-formedness for XML-based formats and one that requires something else for non-XML SGML-based formats, but we're still struggling to define this "something else". If we want to stick to the terms of the SGML standard, we could require that "Non-XML SGML-based delivery units are formatted according to the SGML declaration of their specification or to the Reference Concrete Syntax if no SGML declaration is defined." We might then add a note saying that this does not require (type-)validity. The XML specification does not define well-formedness by means of an SGML declaration but in Extended Backus Naur Form; this is why I propose to split the first rule instead of treating XML as a special case of SGML. An SGML declaration defines such things as the character set and the characters that can be used for delimiters (e.g. <, >, </); it defines a "concrete syntax". The Reference Concrete Syntax is a concrete syntax defined in the SGML standard. (Note that SGML parsers are not required to detect or report errors.) Regards, Christophe Strobbe -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 http://www.docarch.be/
Received on Monday, 20 June 2005 11:15:21 UTC