- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@ingr.com>
- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 16:19:58 -0600
- To: "'Mark Nottingham'" <mnot@mnot.net>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
This thread will lead back to the question of whether support for DTDs, internal subset et al should be in the XML 1.0 core, or removed to coincide with the lowest common denominator applications of the specification. It may be that this can only be fixed by a new version of that specification. It seems unlikely but isn't unthinkable given the need to integrate implementation experience back into living specifications. Should other specifications be able to subset XML 1.0? No, not and claim that their processors are conformant. This can as pointed out lead to interoperability problems (noted as of yet or not) and it invalidates the claims asserted in the XML 1.0 specification and claims made by reference to it. len From: Mark Nottingham [mailto:mnot@mnot.net] > I think the Web Services community ought > to be real nervous about flying in the face of an IETF BCP. Why? It's a Best Current Practice, and it is explicitly scoped to use of XML within *IETF* protocols. It's just that community's best current thinking (words directly from RFC2026) on a particular topic, and may (dare I say probably will) change. Granted, if there is a desire to make it possible to use Web services as the basis of IETF protocols, there might be cause for concern; however, that isn't a requirement that I've heard for a while, and I imagine that the IETF isn't terribly inclined to start using them willy-nilly either; Web services have a different audience. > - On the other hand, I think it's entirely reasonable that SOAP agents > be forbidden from being required or expected or even allowed to charge > off fetching DTDs or external parameter entities at run times, for > obvious performance and security reasons. This gets to the heart of the question, I think; can specific applications of XML restrict the use of syntactic mechanisms it defines? The answer seems to be "yes." I don't think it's supportable to be selective about this, at least at this granularity. > - That granted, forbidding an internal subset seems kind of dumb. > Speaking as an XML processor implementor, the extra code required is > hardly detectable and the performance gain not significiant. > Furthermore, every XML processor in the world just silently does the > internal subset and it's going to cost *extra work* for SOAP > implementations to check that they haven't. I.e. you can't use an > ordinary off-the-shelf non-validating XML processor. Perhaps the WG has a good reason for this prohibition; have they been asked?
Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 17:21:09 UTC