RE: Resource Gloss (Human Readable)

[Michael Brennan <Michael_Brennan@Allegis.com>]

> From: Charles Reitzel [mailto:creitzel@mediaone.net]
> [...]
> Let me put it to you, what is the compelling benefit of RDDL over XML
> Catalog that justifies a separate standards effort?

I've just taken a cursory look at Oasis TR 9401:1997 and John Cowan's XML
Catalog.

These seem to me to be quite different from RDDL. They also appear to be
useless to me for my needs. They seem to be geared solely toward resolving
public entity IDs to system IDs (and vice versa). How do I use them to
identify a collection of resources associated with an XML namespace? (If I'm
missing something, please let me know. I have no experience with SGML, nor
with catalogs. I'm trying to absorb all of this now.)

I'm very excited about RDDL. RDDL is simple, lightweight, easy to implement,
and offers the added bonus that it is displayable in ordinary web browsers.
The approach of placing human readable documentation at the end of the URL
that also contains a machine readable catalog of other related resources is
a perfect approach, IMO. I love this. This is great!