Michael,
Thank you for your thoughtful mail. I am happy to see that you
are serious about bug reports.
> a) Alex Brown has suggested to use W3C xml:id rather than Relax NG DTD
> Compatibility:
snip
> Would the use of W3C xml:id without using the Relax NG DTD
> Compatibility Specification in your opinion add ID semantics to the
> xml:id attribute?
I think so. In other words, I do not understand the non-normative
appendix "D Validation Technologies" of xml:id. But you might want
to hear the opinion of the editors of xml:id.
> The W3C XML ID specification in appendix D.2 recommends:
>
> "RELAX NG Grammar authors are encouraged to declare attributes named
> xml:id with the type xs:ID.",
Yes. I do not understand why this is encouraged.
> and the "Guidelines for using W3C XML Schema Datatypes with RELAX NG"
> state that
>
> "The semantics defined by [W3C XML Schema Datatypes] for the ID, IDREF
> and IDREFS datatypes are purely lexical and do not include the
> cross-reference semantics of the corresponding [XML 1.0] datatypes."
>
> This sounds to me like that using W3C xml:id without Relax NG DTD
> Compatibility does not specify ID semantics for xml:id.
In my understanding, the xml:id processor should provide ID semantics
for xml:id.
>
> On the other hand, the W3C xml:id specification also states that:
>
> "An xml:id processor should assure that the following constraint holds:
>
> * The values of all attributes of type "ID" (which includes all
> xml:id attributes) within a document are unique."
>
> so at least the uniqueness of the IDs may have to be checked. However,
> the semantics of IDREF attributes seem to remain purely lexical unless
> the the Relax NG DTD Compatibility Specification is used. Is my
> understanding correct?
I think that you are right. I do not know why the xml:id spec does not
provide xml:idref as well.
> Is my understanding correct that a specification that uses Relax NG
> (like ODF) may require conformance with only one, or two of the three
> features defined by Relax NG Compatibility. In particular, is it
> possible to request conformance with the attribute default value
> feature, but not with ID/IDREF feature? Or vice versa, could a
> specification request conformance with the ID/IDREF feature only?
Strictly speaking, the DTD compatibility spec defines conformance
of application programs but do not define conformance of schemas.
It rather defines compatibility of schemas. A schema may be compatible
with the ID/IDREF/IDREFS feature without being comptible with the attribute
default values feature.
> In other words: Is your suggestion to claim conformance to the ID/IDREF
> feature in the future, but to not claim conformance to the attribute
> default value and documentation features? Or is your suggestion to
> claim conformance to the full DTD Compatibility specification, but to
> not define any a:defaultValue attributes or a:documentation elements in
> the schema, so that all that what is said about these features in the
> Relax NG DTD Compatibility specification simply is not applicable to the
> ODF schema.
The latter. But I do not think a:documentation elements should be
prohibited.
>
> And is it in your opinion permitted that the ODF specification currently
> makes only use of the default value feature without claiming conformance
> to the ID/IDREF or documentation feature?
The ODF schema is NOT compatible with the default value feature.
It is NOT compatible with the ID/IDREF feature. Since it does not
have any occurrences of a:documentation elements, it is compatible
with the documentation feature.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
--
MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given) <>
