Re: Resource Gloss (Human Readable)

[Charles Reitzel <creitzel@mediaone.net>]

At 10:07 AM 1/5/01 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>Charles Reitzel wrote:
>
> > My understanding is that John Cowan's XML Catalog 
> > was done as part of this OASIS effort.
>
>Actually, XML Catalogs came first, but I am part of the OASIS TC.

Sorry, I should have said "has been incorporated into".  Has it?

> > The difference, I think, is that it 
> > treats human readable readable documents 
> > as "just another associated resource".
>
>The catalogs that OASIS is developing, like 
>their SGML predecessors, are meant to leverage 
>system and public identifiers in XML entity
>and notation declarations, not random URIs 
>(even namespace URIs) in XML content.

I guess my eyes were getting a bit blurry following the thread.  Reading
more closely, you're missing the XLink role attribute needed by some for NS
resolution to multiple resources.  You're after a more general purpose
catalog usable for, say, bitmaps or whatever.

My basic point would be that your job probably isn't done until you do
handle NS entities.  OTOH, RDDL probably isn't done until it can map PUBLIC
IDs to SYSTEM IDs like XML Catalog (as others have suggested in this
thread).  Two 3/4 overlapping specs would be, well, redundant.  

As an aside, I think the difference between PUBLIC IDs and NS URIs is not
important.  I checked the grammar for the NS "URI" and it is a garden
variety XML attribute value, not even a URI, URN, let alone a URL.  I look
at the production for PublicId (in XML, not XML Catalog) and I see it has
character set limitations (roughly a-z,A-Z + comic book cursing). This
limitation is, after all, getting dated.  To answer my own question to Tim
B., perhaps the benefit of RDDL is that it isn't weighed down with SGML
compatibility issues.

To my mind, the discussion is all about a) deciding if a NS "URI" is an
entity or not and b), if it is, what kind.  Personally, I think b) is a
minor point until you decide a).

take it easy,
Charles Reitzel