Re: red/green XML

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>
To: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>; xml-uri@w3.org <xml-uri@w3.org>
Date: Saturday, June 03, 2000 5:49 PM
Subject: red/green XML


>Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>>
>>
>> That is why relative URIs are excluded.
>> If no relative URIs are used, then red and green algorithms match.
>> I can see no alternative as there seems to be a resistance on this list
to
>> absolutizing relative URIs.
>>
>>
>...
>> >Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>> >>
>> >> XPath does not need to be re-issued as it will interwork, as relative
>> >> URIs are excluded.  Software which absolutizes the URI-reference
>> >> and uses the URI will be legal. So will software which compares as
>> >> strings.  Yes, it is is a compromise.
>> >>
>> >
>
> Perhaps I'm confused about terminology. The previous/lower statement
>discussed absolutizing URI-references... doesn't this imply relative-URIs?
>The following statemtent "So will software which compares as strings." is
>also about relative URIs?

Yes, your red/green problem statment is, if I understand it, that if you
have two bits of software, one built to expect relative URIs and
absolutize them (green), and one built to expect relative URIs and compare
them
as strings (red), that they will, given a [certain rather carefully
constrcuted scenario of a]
pair of relative URIs, give different results, which is unacceptable.
I was agreeing and saying that that was why it seems that banning the
relative URI references for namesapces seems the only way to go, as
we have both red and green software in existence.

> There also exists a red/green problem with absolutization. It depends on
>whether a parser implements XBase. A document which is parsed using an
XBase
>conformant parser might not be well formed (red XML), while the same
>document parsed with a current parser will be well formed (green XML).


I agree that that is a huge problem with XBase.  (Ha anyone made that
comment
formally?)

> The red/green problem is my (show stopper) problem with absolutization.

You call it a showstopper problem with absolutiziation, I would call it
a showstopper problem with litteral strings!  The problem is they are
incompatible
for certian cass of relative URI reference.  You can't use the case,
logically,
to argue which one "is" the problem.

>Jonathan Borden
>

Received on Tuesday, 6 June 2000 10:01:39 UTC