Re: XML Public Indentifier

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Daniel Veillard <veillard@redhat.com> was heard to say:
|   I also didn't got a valid answer why you decided that system identifier
| resolution in the DOCTYPE and elsewhere in the document had to be done
| in a different way and using a different syntax in the Catalogs !

Well, I thought my answer was valid :-)

1. The external identifier has both public and system parts and this
requires the resolver to be more sophisticated. It has to handle
different prefer settings and the possibility of public as well as
system delegation. For the purposes of resolution, you cannot treat a
system identifier like a random URI.

You could, I suppose, treat a random URI like an external identifier
with a null public id, but that would make every resolution take into
account possibilities that cannot arise.

2. The external identifier catalog semantics are well understood and
have been used by the SGML and XML communities for years. It was a
requirement of the TC that the semantics of XML Catalogs in this
regard would be exactly the same as the semantics of TR9401.

General URI lookup is a new feature so it seemed reasonable to isolate
it.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM   | Who knows whether the best of men be known? or
XML Standards Engineer | whether there be not more remarkable persons
XML Technology Center  | forgot, than any that stand remembered in the
Sun Microsystems, Inc. | known account of time.--Sir Thomas Browne