xml-dev - RE: XML Notation PI

["John E. Simpson" <simpson@polaris.net>]

At 09:00 AM 5/16/2000 -0700, Pierre, Sebastian wrote:
>  Isn't there a standard and common FPI for XML browsers for basic 
> media-types?
>  For example if I have a PNG notation in my XML file, how can I get IE5 
> or Mozilla to display it?

Ah. Well, that's something of a separate question -- not simply, "What 
'official' or quasi-official identifiers can I use to communicate to 
Notation-Aware Application X how to associate my notation declarations with 
standard types of processing?" but "What can I do to make current browsers 
notation-aware?"

The answer to the question you're really asking :) is, regrettably, de 
nada. The conventional solution to the problem of "showing an image in my 
XML file" is to transform your XML to (X)HTML, using XSLT; once in HTML of 
course you display the images in the standard way, using the img element 
with an href attribute. (Note that this solution doesn't require the use of 
notations at all, just a URI.) The transformation to HTML can be 
server-side, static -- offline -- or dynamic, using servlets and such. Or 
if you're absolutely certain that the page's visitors will be locked into a 
particular client, and that the client in question is XSLT-aware, then the 
transformation can be done dynamically and client-side.

BTW, Tim Bray's Annotated XML Spec (http://wwww.xml.com/axml/axml.html) says:

      Public Identifiers Are Non-Portable

      Once again, public identifiers are a trick inherited from
      SGML that are probably only useful to people who already
      have working SGML software installed. Remember that if
      you use public identifiers within your own organization,
      that's perfectly OK, but if you want to interchange XML
      documents with anybody external, they have the right to
      demand, and you have the obligation to provide, a working
      system identifier (URI) for each external entity.

================================================================
John E. Simpson          | "I hate it when my foot falls asleep
http://www.flixml.org    | during the day because that means it's
simpson@polaris.net      | going to be up all night." (Steven Wright)


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