Re: Draft of Chapter 4 of webarch

Tim Bray wrote:
> Will soon show up at http://www.tbray.org/tag/wa-c4.html.

Thanks for this document, here are a few notes, mostly nitpicks:

4.1.1

In the first sentence, I think it would be valuable to define more precisely 
what "accessible" in "accessible normative specification" means. My life would 
improve ten-fold if fewer consortia out there thought that Word was an 
intelligent tool with which to write specifications, and its proprietary format 
a good one in which to disseminate them.

In "Use of Examples", I'm unsure that the fact that people learn well by example 
is a lesson of the Web. Someone must have noticed that earlier on :)


4.2.2

I think that when you mention the "XML Flow Objects", and further down "XML FO" 
you really mean "XSL Formatting Objects" and "XSL-FO".


4.2.3

You state that "a standalone data format is PDF; it is typically neither 
embedded in representations encoded in other formats nor is data in other 
formats generally embeddable in it". While it is true that I have never seen PDF 
embedded in other formats, the reverse is quite wrong. PDF can and does embed 
other interesting formats such as raster images or SVG documents.

I'm trying to think of a format that neither embeds nor is embedded, but nothing 
springs to mind.


4.5.2

I feel that saying that namespaces are "often desired" isn't strong enough.


4.5.3

You state that "the only defined way to establish that an attribute is of type 
ID is via a DTD", which is only true for a restrictive definition of ID since 
other schema languages can also attribute identity. Is there any hope of seeing 
xml:id before webarch (pretty please)?

-- 
Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@expway.fr>
Research Engineer, Expway        http://expway.fr/
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Received on Wednesday, 11 June 2003 06:29:22 UTC