Re: [xml-dev] ArchForms and LPDs

[Arjun Ray <arayq2@gmail.com>]

 On Sun, 25 Jul 2021 13:24:39 +0200, Marcus Reichardt
<u123724@gmail.com> wrote:

| Ah thanks Arjun for doing the effort to lookup the spec and
| recapitulate from memory.

This was all a long time ago!  In late 2000, I made several posts to
comp.text.sgml, in an effort to catch the attention of people who
might be involved in the next TC.  The aim was to consider syntax
extensions - no longer a complete no-no after the WebSGML TC - among
other improvements.  (Before CTS became inaccessible in Google Groups,
I managed to salvage 4 of those posts; they are here:
http://users.nyct.net/~aray/sgo/.) 

There was hardly any response that I can recall.  That was an early
sign that SGML was on its way to fossilization.  As a matter of fact,
I don't know of any further TCs to ISO 8879 after the WebSGML TC in
1996, despite the official 5-year cycle for such reviews.  So a lot of
this discussion is ultimately of archaeological value only...

| But [...] you *still* need to sneak the ArchForms PI into the 
| document using parameter entities somehow. So the prospect of 
| defining a generic  mapping facility using ArchForms without 
| touching source documents is just as hopeless as it is with LPDs, 
| if that was the goal.

Agreed, though my understanding was that the PI would be in the source
document to begin with, not added later; and that archform processing
would have to be triggered explicitly (i.e. it was off by default), so
the original presence of the PI was harmless.  There was a subsequent
argument (Eliot Kimber was a strong proponent of this) that the PI
also served the purpose of declaring the true document type, something
that DTDs couldn't do despite their designation. 
 
| So it's not like the reference implementation is beyond bending 
| the rules :)

True. :-)

| [...] so I'm concluding that SP doesn't implement linktype fallback
| to a parent linkset at all.

Right.  I don't remember exactly where (CTS? CTX? xml-dev?), but this
dismaying "failure" of SP to abide by the Handbook's description was
discussed, and James provided the clinching rationale: that identical
text in the standard called for identical treatment in a conforming
implementation.

| My guess is it's merely an accident and follows from the HyTime
| editors desire to not, at all costs, introduce new constructs into
| SGML itself and rather have HyTime layered cleanly as an SGML
| application. Maybe it's also a matter of pushing changes through ISO
| processes and reaching new consensus, I don't know; but in any case
| would need addressing in a future revision of ISO 8879 ;)

If there ever is one...