xml-dev - Re: URNs as SYSTEM IDs

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 15:22 2000 11 22 -0500, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>At 02:57 PM 11/22/00 -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
>>/ "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com> was heard to say:
>>| In common practice, that's meant using URLs, typically HTTP-based URLs.
>>| Validating (and some non-validating) XML parsers tend to report errors when
>>| they can't retrieve the content referenced by a SystemLiteral, since
>>| effectively it means that they can't validate the document.
>>
>>They can retrieve the content if they have some practical entity
>>management system in place, such as OASIS TR9401 Catalogs (through,
>>for example, a SAX entityResolver).
>
>The problem is that this kind of infrastructure is barely deployed, and
>many developers don't even know of its existence. 

Well, what do you suggest about that?  We can create standards all day,
but if they are barely deployed, it doesn't matter.  Creating another
standard or "fixing" an existing one isn't going to help.

TR9401 has existed in some fashion since 1994.  For recent public
domain work available to all developers--as well as a good discussion
about the problem--see Norm's article at:

http://www.arbortext.com/Think_Tank/Norm_s_Column/Issue_Three/issue_three.html

The solutions are out there--if the problem is that people aren't using
the solutions, then that's a different problem, and not one that's
solved by creating more standards or rewriting the existing ones.

paul

p.s.  Actually, there are several tools that support various
versions of TR9401 and/or other entity resolvers.  If your
favorite tool doesn't, then talk to the maintainers of that
tool to get it fixed.