XML Fragment Interchange Requirements: comment

I did not see anything in the document that addresses the following
requirements:

1) The fragment will contain enough context information to allow an editor
to make arbitrary modifications to the content of the fragment and then
substitute the amended fragment for the original. That is, the fragment
context identifies unambiguously "where the fragment came from".

Justification: The requirements address the need to modify a fragment making
changes that are valid in the context of the original document, but the only
way this makes sense is if the modified fragment is to replace the original.
This means there is a requirement to remember "where it came from". I don't
believe the other stated requirements are sufficient to achieve this.

Discusssion: I don't think this is difficult provided the orginal document
is "locked" in the meantime. It is more difficult if other changes can
happen concurrently. It is achievable, for example, by inserting a comment
into the original document at the place where the fragment belongs.

2) It will be possible to insert a fragment into a different XML document
from the one it originally came from, or a different place in the original
document: a kind of cut-and-paste operation. This implies there is a need to
compare whether the original context of the fragment is compatible with the
new context.

Discussion: the new document might be simply a "wrapper" for the fragment,
or it might be something more substantial. There's little point in
extracting fragments of XML documents unless you have some flexibility in
how you put them back together.

Additional note: there is no use case (or reference scenario) for modifying
a fragment other than an entity.

Regards,

Michael Kay

Received on Tuesday, 1 December 1998 11:37:13 UTC