xxxML on top of, embedded in XML

I'm one of the people working on PGML, the proposed 2D graphics format
based on XML
	(http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-PGML-19980410.html)

We're looking into how best to provide DOM access to PGML. I'm reasonably
familiar with the current spec, but I didn't see any mention of two issues
we're very interested in:

1. Suggestions for specification of a DOM for XML applications such as PGML
and MathML. Does the working group expect that XML applications use the
generic XML DOM specification or a specialization? My perhaps naive take is
that the HTML DOM specification is one example of a specialization in that
classes are defined that correspond to particular HTML elements and that
these classes provide direct access to most element attributes. My current
thinking is to leave the Document object as is, but to subclass Element.
All document-wide but PGML-specific info would be tied to the root element.
This is different from the HTML DOM but seems more general and more
interoperable.

2. Supposing the answer to 1 is that a specialized DOM for PGML and other
XML applications is expected, has thought been given to how to integrate
multiple DOMs? It seems that MathML or PGML embedded in a more general XML
document would be considered a DocumentFragment. This all should 'just
work', but as the XML people have found with namespaces, there can be lots
of interesting details to work out.

Richard

Received on Thursday, 30 April 1998 13:51:19 UTC