Re: suggest validator prefer URI to FPI

Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote to <mailto:www-validator@w3.org> on 17 
August 2004 in "Re: suggest validator prefer URI to FPI" 
(<mid:1092749701.4811.155.camel@stratustier>):

> SYSTEM identifiers may be dereferenced, but needs not be. As such, they
> are probably more interesting than public ones, with which you can't do
> anything if you don't know them.

This is false. All SGML/XML formal public identifiers (FPIs) are 
isomorphic to URIs in the 'urn' namespace 'publicid' [1]. The 
conversion from one form to the other is precisely defined.

So, assuming that I can't query the Web directly about a formal public 
identifier, I can translate the formal public identifier to a URI 
(which happens to be a URN of the 'urn' scheme) and query the Web about 
the URI.

[1]
Norman Walsh; John Cowan; Paul Grosso.
"A URN Namespace for Public Identifiers".
August 2001.
Internet Engineering Task Force Request For Comments (RFC) 3151.
<urn:ietf:rfc:3151> (at various locations).

Received on Friday, 20 August 2004 05:47:35 UTC