- From: Henry S. Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:52:27 +0000
- To: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
- Cc: Mark Baker <mark@coactus.com>, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>, www-tag@w3.org, connolly@w3.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 noah_mendelsohn writes: > . . . > To try and resolve this, I've drafted a proposed alternative version > of section 4.2.3. > . . . > The new text is available at [1], with diffs from the previous > (problematic) text at [2]. I'd be very grateful for both of your thoughts > on this. Does this resolve the concern? Thank you. > [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-3023.html > [2] > http://www.w3.org/2007/10/htmldiff?doc1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments.html&doc2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments-3023.html#XMLSpecs I think the minor modification to the first paragraph of 4.2.3 is helpful and to the point, and allows those who care to see there an acknowledgement that only full recursive/compositional determination of the semantics of an XML document guarantees that a deeply nested element means what its namespace document might suggest it means. I'm much less happy with the paragraph added at the end of 4.2.3. I would not expect 3023bis to mandate the interpretation of namespace qualified names as specified in a namespace document, because to do so would confuse two distinct things: XML namespaces and XML languages. I also don't expect 3023bis to address this point in any definitive way, because to do so would require resolve the complexity the TAG has already uncovered in attempting to specify a fully-general definition of the semantics of XML documents (see TAG issue xmlFunctions-34). I think the finding would be fine without this new paragraph at all, but if some qualification is necessary, I would suggest something much simpler, along the following lines: Careful readers of RFC 3023, which governs the XML media types, will note that it only _allows_ namespace URIs to be interpreted as specifying the semantics of qualified names, without _requiring_ this. This means that processors that do _not_ behave as the one described in the example above are not in violation of the RFC. But processors that _do_ behave in that way are not only allowed by the RFC, but support the integration of XML into the self-describing web. ht - -- Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Half-time member of W3C Team 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440 Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/ [mail really from me _always_ has this .sig -- mail without it is forged spam] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFJeHobkjnJixAXWBoRAueUAJ0RnR0juupoGCvkjsIG2g5Lqt/msgCggIBs 90dTsXi3kkHIJ7J8SNpttlo= =5BAr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Thursday, 22 January 2009 13:53:19 UTC