[xml-dev] RDDL in ZIP

[Rick Jelliffe <ricko@allette.com.au>]

I have been looking at how to ZIP a RDDL directory. The purpose of this is
to have a portable format, widely useable on different machines and 
readily creatable (esp. with WinZIP or with Java), which can bundle
DTDs, schema, stylesheets and scripts together, enough that a company 
or document architect can bundle all the resources that their product or local
system requires.  The RDDL resources available over the WWW are public
and, presumably, free; I think we need to have a way that local resources
and non-free resources can use the directory approach too. 

I think this is a logical next step for open document creation and maintenance.
I see this as a distinct area from the area of document distribution and rights 
management: that is how to extract money from publishing. This is more 
how to set systems up to create 

It seems to me that all we need is a ZIP file containing 
 1) a RDDL page (with any related CSS and GIFs etc at the root)
 2) subdirectory  schema/  containing DTDs, schemas
 3) subdirectory  documentation/ containing documentation
 4) subdirectory  software/ containing scripts for editing or viewing, including CSS.

(The actual names and number of the directories are not really important.)
The relative locations and purposes of the resources are all specified in the
RDDL page. This is open and extensible.
 
I think two things that are missing from RDDL that are needed are:
 1) A RDDL document currently does not have anyway to tell you
    what namespace it is for: the assumption is that you must have 
    accessed the URL to get it, so you already know.  However
    we need to be able to ask the RDDL archive "what namespace
    are you for?"
  2) There does not seem to be a clear way to associate a script
     with an element or attribute name.  We need something by
     which we can say "if you want to edit an eg:person, run this
     JavaScript" or "if you want to view a cals:table, run this
     TCL script".

Any suggestions?  

Rick Jelliffe