RE: XML Infoset Comment Resolution: issue-query-*

Dear Members of the Core WG

Thank you very much for taking many of our issues into account and to
revise the infoset draft accordingly. This is highly appreciated.
The Query WG reviewed your answers carefully and still have some 
questions and comments about the disposition of the
following issues and would appreciate any clarification you could
provide us.

PS: My apologies for being a day late, but I thought that I had sent 
this email out on Friday night, but the synch did not pick it up. I
hope that you will still be able to consider our feedback.

Issue query-1a 
Don't provide prefix on elements/attributes.
Origin: mrys@microsoft.com: origin
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-infoset-comments/2001JanMar
/0071.html> 
Core group discussions (MEMBER ONLY): reference
<http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/xml-f2f-minutes> 

Response:
The [prefix] property is required so that XML 1.0 reporting
requirements can be expressed in terms of the infoset.

Comment:
It's not entirely clear to us what you mean by "XML 1.0 reporting
requirements".  The Infoset draft of 22 March 2001 at
http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/WD-infoset-20010322 says "XML 1.0
documents that do not conform to [Namespaces] [...] are not considered
to have meaningful information sets."

Some members of the Query WG take your phrase "XML 1.0 reporting
requirements" to denote the requirements for reporting an infoset for
documents which do not conform to [Namespaces], and thus to be a
contradiction of the sentence just quoted.

Other members of the Query WG assume that this phrase refers to XML
1.0, with or without reference to [Namespaces].  In any XML 1.0
document, strings of characters in the input match non-terminals in
the XML 1.0 grammar.  It is natural to want to talk about what strings
match the 'Name' non-terminal, and the [prefix] property is necessary
to allow this to happen.  (In the discussion, the proponents of this
view found themselves a bit hampered by the fact that there is in fact
no name for such a string, but this should not be taken as a request
for such a named property.)

There is a fear, among some members of the WG, that defining the
[prefix] property as part of the infoset will tend to suggest that the
prefix is a semantically relevant part of an XML document.  A general
query system might then be expected -- or compelled by user demand --
to make queries for specific prefixes possible; this seems to
contradict the general use of namespaces, where prefixes are not
considered semantically meaningful and should thus not be queriable.
The relevant parts of [Namespaces] include the last sentence of
section 3, "Note that the prefix functions only as a placeholder for a
namespace name. Applications should use the namespace name, not the
prefix, in constructing names whose scope extends beyond the
containing document."  These members of the WG would like this issue
to be reconsidered if possible, and for the [prefix] property to be
removed if possible.

Other members of the WG accept the decision of the Core WG to retain
the [prefix] property, and believe that any user confusion must be
fought with education.

It would be helpful if the spec could say clearly that [Namespaces]
specifies that the prefix does not carry semantical meaning, and
repeating its warning that applications should rely on the namespace
name, and not on the prefix -- or, even better, if a note could be
added saying that namespace-aware applications will normally not
provide or use this property.  Sample wording (intended to be added at
the end of the current description of the [prefix] property): "Note:
the [Namespaces] Recommendation specifies that for purposes of
namespace-aware processing, this property is without semantic
significance: namespace aware processing must use the [namespace
name] property, not this one, to identify namespaces."  (This is a bit
longer than ideal, but we have not yet found a shorter phrasing.)

Issue query-8b 
Default attribute type should be CDATA.
Origin: mrys@microsoft.com: origin
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-infoset-comments/2001JanMar
/0071.html> 
Core group discussions (MEMBER ONLY): reference
<http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/xml-f2f-minutes> 

Response:
Having null (now "no value") as default type gives more information
than CDATA and (more importantly) is consistent with other cases of
absent definitions. Applications should indeed treat it as
semantically the same as CDATA. 

Comment: 
If applications should treat it as semantically the same as
CDATA, why does the infoset not provide this as the type? What are the
scenarios then that would benefit from the "no value"? We would like to
ask you to include at least your last sentence of the response into the 
document for clarification.

Issue query-13 
Standalone should be boolean.
Origin: mrys@microsoft.com: origin
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-infoset-comments/2001JanMar
/0071.html> 
Core group discussions (MEMBER ONLY): reference
<http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/xml-f2f-minutes> 

Response:
We prefer to use the same term that is used in the XML document
itself. 

Comment: 
Could the non-normative schema and RDF description then
map it to Boolean instead?

Issue query-18 
More examples and use cases would be useful.
Origin: mrys@microsoft.com: origin
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-infoset-comments/2001JanMar
/0071.html> 
Core group discussions (MEMBER ONLY): reference
<http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/xml-f2f-minutes> 

Response:
We will add some if time permits. 

Comment: 
We understand the time constraints for the publication of
the Infoset document and the time it takes to add all examples. We
certainly welcome any examples that can be added without much impact
on the schedule and would like to ask the group to reissue the infoset
document at a later date with more examples. These examples will be
really helpful to understand what an infoset provides.   

Thanks again for bringing the Infoset to a successful recommendation.

Best regards
Michael



> -----Original Message-----
> From: XML Infoset Comments [mailto:www-xml-infoset-comments@w3.org]
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 10:11 AM
> To: Michael Rys
> Cc: pgrosso@arbortext.com; lehors@us.ibm.com
> Subject: XML Infoset Comment Resolution: issue-query-*
> 
> 
> Michael,
> 
> Thank you for your comment(s) [1] on the XML Infoset Last Call WD [2].
> 
> The XML Core WG has processed all Last Call comments and produced a
> Dispostion of Comments (DoC) document [3] and a new interim draft [4] 
> that reflects our dispositions.  We hope to request that this 
> new draft
> (possibly with minor changes) be promoted to a Candidate 
> Recommendation
> (CR) within the next week or two.  At this time, we are asking you to 
> review how your comments were resolved and to let us know if 
> you accept 
> our resolution or wish to register an objection to our 
> advancing to CR. 
> 
> Your comment(s) and resolution can be found in the DoC starting at:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/infoset-disposition#issue-query-1a
> 
> Please Reply to this message with your response as soon as possible.
> If we have no response by March 24th, we will assume you have no
> objection to our advancing to CR.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Paul Grosso, Arnaud Le Hors
> XML Core WG Co-chairs
> 
> [1] 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-infoset-comments/2
001JanMar/0071
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml-infoset-20010202/
[3] http://www.w3.org/XML/Group/2001/03/infoset-disposition
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml-infoset-20010316/

Received on Sunday, 25 March 2001 12:57:13 UTC