RE: REJECT: XPointer PR

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the comment on the use of qnames as XPointer
schemes in the XPointer PR. Since you have been active
in developing additional XPointer schemes I think your
comments have particular weight.

The XML Linking WG debated what sort of mechanisms would
allow others to define their own schemes. Allowing community-
defined schemes requires a mechanism to ensure there
are no collisions between scheme names. I'm sure you
would be quite unhappy if some corporation decided to
define an xmlns-local() scheme which had a different
syntax and semantic than yours.

There is no doubt that qnames are bulky. But the group
decided they were the approach to recommend, given the
level of difficulty in establishing and continuing to
operate a registration agency. The notion of a registry
of XPointer scheme names has come up before and the group
was told by our staff contact that the W3C has never been
in the registry business, and doesn't have the resources
to change this now.

> This reservation serves no purpose whatsoever except to
> gild the W3C's supposed control over a field in which it
> shows little or no interest in future participation.

The point of the reservation is to ensure there is some kind
of MECHANISM to allow people to define XPointer schemes
without the risk of collision, and with extensive review so
that no one organization can get away with a 'land-grab' of
scheme names.


> I strongly recommend striking this and leaving
> such work to future development, wherever it may appear, 
> unless the W3C can demonstrate that it has genuine commitment
> to future generic XML XPointer scheme development which
> might justify this restriction.

On the point of future development, please note that
nothing in the PR draft prevents someone from writing a W3C
Recommendation that says, in essence, "unqualified schemes
are now registered at http://example.org/somewhere". 


Sincerely,
Ron Daniel, Jr.
Acting chair, XML Linking Working Group



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-xml-linking-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-xml-linking-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> Simon St.Laurent
> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 1:33 PM
> To: www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org
> Subject: REJECT: XPointer PR
> 
> 
> 
> The XPointer Framework Proposed Recommendation has language 
> in it that I
> do not consider acceptable and which I will simply reject in 
> practice if
> this wrong-headed notion survives to the Recommendation stage.
> 
> Section 3.3 states:
> -------------------------
> A scheme name consists syntactically of an optional Prefix and a
> LocalPart, as defined in [XML-Names]. Abstractly, scheme names are a
> tuple consisting of the LocalPart and the namespace name corresponding
> to that Prefix in the namespace binding context. If the namespace
> binding context contains no corresponding prefix, or if the (namespace
> name, LocalPart) pair does not correspond to a scheme name 
> supported by
> the XPointer processor, the pointer part is skipped.
> 
> This specification reserves all unqualified scheme names for 
> definition
> in additional XPointer schemes defined in W3C Recommendations. The use
> of QNames as scheme names provides a general framework for 
> extensibility
> by other XML-based media types wishing to use this framework 
> in defining
> their own fragment identifier languages. The definition of 
> any scheme to
> be used in conjunction with the XPointer framework must specify a name
> for the scheme, consisting of a (namespace name, LocalPart) pair.
> ----------------------------
> 
> Apart from continuing to embroider the deeply-complicating notion of
> QName processing ever deeper into the XML universe, this proposal
> inflicts ever more verbosity on XPointers, burdening them 
> with ever more
> barriers to human editing and interpretation.
> 
> My favorite example uses the xmlns-local() scheme[1] I proposed
> recently.  If forced to use this poisonous QName mechanism, what once
> looked like:
> #xmlns-local()[restOfXPointer]
> 
> suddenly explodes to:
> xmlns(ns=http://simonstl.com/ns/bogus)xmlns-local()[restOfXPointer]
> 
> which is amusing at best.
> 
> This reservation serves no purpose whatsoever except to gild the W3C's
> supposed control over a field in which it shows little or no 
> interest in
> future participation.  I strongly recommend striking this and leaving
> such work to future development, wherever it may appear, 
> unless the W3C
> can demonstrate that it has genuine commitment to future generic XML
> XPointer scheme development which might justify this restriction.
> 
> [1] - 
> http://simonstl.com/ietf/draft-stlaurent-xmlns-local-frag-00.h
tml


-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

Received on Thursday, 14 November 2002 16:41:28 UTC