Processing XML 1.1 documents with XML Schema 1.0 processors

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Hi,

The W3C has recently published a note titled "Processing XML 1.1
documents with XML Schema 1.0
processors" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-xml11schema10-20050511/)
that makes the following suggestion:

<quote
ref="http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-xml11schema10-20050511/#d0e532";>

To produce an XML-1.1-friendly version of an XML Schema 1.0 processor:

     1. Replace its XML 1.0 front-end parser with an XML 1.1 front-end
        parser;
        
     2. Change its implementations of the XML Schema types Name,
        NMTOKEN, QName and string, to use the relevant XML (Namespaces)
        1.1 productions;

</quote>

I am wondering what would be the status of such a W3C XML Schema 1.0
processor that would comply to XML 1.1 but would not comply to the XML
Schema part 2 rec!

While it seems a good idea for people using XML 1.1 to have datatype
libraries that support XML 1.1 productions, I think that there should be
a way to specify which datatype library you want to use.

This is the case with RELAX NG and its external datatype libraries
identified through URI's.

W3C XML Schema does also use URIs to identify its datatypes and
disambiguate between its predefined types (xs:token) and user defined
types (my:token).

I am not a big fan of using namespace URIs for the versioning of XML
vocabularies, but the versioning of datatype libraries is a different
story and I am wondering if WXS couldn't use URIs to differentiate the
XML 1.0 and XML 1.1 datatype libraries.

In that case, I could choose between xs1.0:token and xs1.1:token by
assigning the right namespace URIs to these prefixes.

Putting aside the incompatibilities which belong to the level of the
parser, I am also wondering if XML 1.1 datatypes couldn't be derived
from the W3C XML Schema 1.0 xs:string datatypes using the pattern facet.

In that case, a part of the problem could be solved by defining a
"standard" user type library emulating XML 1.1 productions as user
defined W3C XML Schema part 2 datatypes.

Would that make sense? 

My 0,02¤

Eric  

-- 
Have you ever thought about unit testing XSLT templates?
                                                     http://xsltunit.org
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Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
(ISO) RELAX NG   ISBN:0-596-00421-4 http://oreilly.com/catalog/relax
(W3C) XML Schema ISBN:0-596-00252-1 http://oreilly.com/catalog/xmlschema
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