Re: Last Call for the XML Fragment Interchange Rec

At 16:52 1999 04 14 +0800, James Tauber wrote:
>[I'm writing to you Paul because it's a general question that I'm
>hoping you'll answer for me and to the fragment-comments alias (which I
>guess includes you anyway) in case it is felt that the answer to these
>questions could be made clearer in the spec. I apologise in advance,
>though, if the spec does answer these questions and I just didn't look
>hard enough, which is quite possible]

Yes, I'm on the comments alias, and I'm cc-ing my answer there so that
it is archived.

>Am I right in thinking that the context that one provides in the FCS is
>dependent simply on the amount of context that one *needs* to properly
>deal with the fragment body?

You are correct.  All your examples were correct.

The last sentence of the first paragraph of the overview of the
section on fragment context specification says:

  All information would be optional; how much gets included in 
  any particular fragment context specification is up to the sender 
  and recipient, and how this gets determined is outside of the
  scope of this Recommendation.

The intent of the WG is reflected by this statement and is certainly
as you have interpreted it in all your examples.  However, a quick
reread of the document doesn't indicate any wording other than that
above to emphasize this point.  If you had a suggestion of where we
might say something that would be most effective and perhaps a few
words that you feel would make this more obvious, please submit your
ideas to this comment mail list.  I've read this so much, it's hard
for me to know what's clear and what is just in my mind.

>Also, might one want to include in the FCS all elements with an ID
>attribute to ensure uniqueness if the fragment is being edited?

Insofar as the fragment creator can put as much (or as little) as
desired into the fcs, you are correct that one could include all
elements with IDs as you have shown, and a validating processor
(provided the fragment also includes or references the declarations
necessary to indicate ID-ness) could potentially ensure ID uniqueness 
during editing of the fragment.

However, everything beyond defining what can be in the fcs and how 
to transmit it--including issues of editing and validating fragments
(much less ensuring validity of the parent document upon any "return" 
of a modified fragment)--is outside the scope of this Rec (as indicated 
in the second paragraph of the Scope section).

paul

Received on Wednesday, 14 April 1999 11:19:27 UTC