re: PSVI

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 07:27 AM 3/3/01 -0500, David Megginson wrote:
>This works only if you control both ends of the transaction.
>Normally, if you're *providing* information in XML, you won't control
>the receiver's environment -- the receiver will be using an
>off-the-shelf XML parser that automatically resolves the DOCTYPE using
>the system identifier, and when their system stops working, they'll
>come screaming to you (and at you).

Sure.  But I was focusing on strategies for the recipient who just wants to 
make certain that a document conforms to a given DTD.  I should have been 
clearer about this, since it wasn't clear from previous context.

I don't actually consider sender-receiver coordination of XML processing a 
solvable problem in any generic sense - too many options, too late to fix.

>I've received a few private e-mails from companies in the news
>industry who learned this the hard way (usually by pissing off an
>important customer).

I'm afraid that's a pretty common story.

>Again, this doesn't help the provider, who is the one who has to
>decide whether to include the DOCTYPE declaration in the outgoing
>XML.  If I'm publishing XML that may be used by hundreds or thousands
>of customers, many of whom have existing XML installations, can I
>really trust that every one of them (or even most) will get something
>like this right?

Yep.  And the "receiver is always right", IMHO.


Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books