RE: Internal DTD Examples Invalidate the RDF/XML Documents

I apologize for yelling.  I capitalized that part because my message was a bit lengthy and I wanted to make sure you saw what I took as a key point.

What I make of this is that it is a matter of out-of-band (application) agreement whether the presence of a Document Type Declaration is a signal that the document should be validatable or is not intended to be validatable (like the presence of a digital signature is a signal that the signature should be verifiable, in some circles at least).  So, if intentional non-validatability is part of the practice with RDF (e.g., as with the OWL RDF Schema), I believe that agreement should be made explicit.  

Somewhere around here, I keep running into the expression "precise meaning."  I guess we should provide that wherever it is found to be missing.

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Meanwhile, I think I need to look at XML 1.0 and 1.1 more carefully and see whether this is a conversation that I should take up on an XML list. I will also look at the WS-I work to see if this kind of disconnect is a concern or not in the profiles for interoperability.

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I am not sure about the logic that says an unvalidatable DTD  in an interoperability situation is a good thing just to obtain entity definitions.  In the specific case of RDF, it seems to be about wanting to fake QNames where a URI is required.  This (and its reverse, in the case of property elements, that leads to contortions for establishing a namespace so that the necessary QName can be written) seems so inherent to RDF that maybe an RDF-specific, abstracted, but XML-consistent solution would be more appropriate than relying on (XML) preprocessing.  I think that question is already on the table, however.  I'd be surprised to see such a dramatic change to RDF at this point.  The QName-URI mapping game seems pretty bolted in.  -- [;<)

-- Dennis.

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Manola [mailto:fmanola@acm.org]
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 07:38
To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org
Cc: www-rdf-comments@w3.org
Subject: Re: Internal DTD Examples Invalidate the RDF/XML Documents

[ ... ]



> 3.	I think that is the disconnect for me. 
> 
> It is simply very peculiar to have a practice that involves using a Document Type Declaration that establishes a DTD for which there are no XML valid documents.
> 
> SOMEHOW, THE PRACTICE NEEDS TO BE MADE EXPLICIT.  It is weird to think that someone won't try the technique in the examples (I did), and it is even more startling to have an XML editor complain when fed the OWL RDF Schema. 
> 


You needn't yell.  I'm certainly willing to make the Primer clearer 
about what's going on here (that's why I asked if you thought further 
discussion was needed).  However, as I noted above I don't think this is 
as peculiar as you think it is, and I think it is something explicitly 
provided for in XML.  That is, XML explicitly provides for using 
document type declarations in documents that aren't intended to be 
validated.

Received on Friday, 3 October 2003 12:27:51 UTC