Re: Related resources (was Re: Namespace or document gloss?)

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 20:46 2001 01 02 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>At 09:48 PM 02/01/01 -0500, Thomas B. Passin wrote:
>>Yes, I think being able to include the catalog in the document itself could be
>>very valuable, and we ought to make sure that it's possible as an option.
>
>Multipart-mime arguably gives you that for free, and there's even
>a URI scheme for pointing at it.  Seems real clean to me. -Tim

To piggy back on what Tim says, I think the idea of having PIs
in the document point to a catalog and/or resource directory--or 
otherwise having the catalog/RD embedded in the document--doesn't
seem like the modern (or best) way to do things.  Again, I think this
gets close to other issues that were discussed under XML Packaging in 
the past [1],[2] (which is part of why XML Packaging never happened--it
encompassed too many related but distinct issues--lets try to avoid
doing that in our current resource directory work).

Associating one resource with another one is probably better done
using some packaging/association method--be that a manifest,
multipart mime, RDF, etc.--than by insisting that the two resources
are either combined in the same XML file or referenced directly from 
each other.  If one needs some level of guarantee that a certain
association is uncompromised, then use digital signatures [3] on the
package/manifest/whatever.

paul

[1] http://www.w3.org/XML/2000/07/xpkg-19991207-min
[2] http://www.w3.org/1999/07/xml-pkg234/Overview
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/