RE: typing

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

And that has caused no end of problems in 
other language efforts.  They read the 
spec, assume they can put the external 
entities in, then IE barfs on it when 
anyone tries to browse it.  We tell 
them, "put some local copies on 
the disk" and they say, "that's 
not what the spec says, that's not 
the web way" we reply "but you will 
produce a hotspot if you do that 
and the web won't like that either" and 
they huff and puff and blame XML 
and Microsoft.

Folks, the external entity idea 
based on a common URL identifier 
doesn't work worth beans.  Why not?  
MS does know and it has been tested 
to death.  Why was it not fixed?  
Maybe URL/URI management of a common 
resources is not such a good idea.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@mediaone.net]

An example: try to browse:

http://www.openhealth.org/ASTM/operative.report.example.xml

in IE5 (I'm using version 5.50.4522.1800):

It hangs!

This is due to external parameter entities at URLs within the DTD which is
at a URL (i.e. the same document validates and browses just fine when the
document and DTD and entities are on the local disc).

Seems that not alot of work has gone into testing the IE5 DTD related code
under a large variety of conditions -- perhaps this reflects the apparent
fact that not alot of Microsoft's customers think this is important.

(note that the offending modules are XHTML Basic -- so don't blame us in the
ASTM XML Healthcare committee -- except perhaps for wanting to use XHTML
Basic!)

Other validators such as the W3C's fail to process URL redirections etc.
etc. (as I said subtle issues that might -only- come out if the systems were
being extensively used). Just my opinion.