[DBX5] Is this a DocBook document?

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@pinkjuice.com>]

Hi

I think that XML documents should be able to specify their main XML 
language without having to include a DTD doctype declaration, since the 
latter is
1. schema language specific
2. a problem since it may modify the document (attributes values) in a
    subset of conforming XML parsers
and
3. not accessible from XSLT.

Processing tools such as validators need to be able to find out the main 
language of a document, so that they can know which schema(s) apply.

The namespace plus a version attribute seems to be a possible solution.

So I propose that the next DocBook XML be in a namespace, and that each 
DBX document should have a required version attribute on it's root 
element, plus an optional profile attribute.

Ideally this should be standardized on the XML level:

1.
xmlns=""
(exists)

2.
xml:version=""
(doesn't exist yet)
especiall needed if the language is not version 1.0 or if the namespace 
name doesn't contain version info (eg is the same for all versions, 
which I prefer).

3.
optional xml:profile=""
(doesn't exist yet)
Useful if a subset is used.

Catalog entries could look like this:
(SVG is used as example since it is namespaced, uses a version 
attribute, and also shows the requirement for specification of the 
profile attribute)

<language
   name="SVG"
   ns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg";
   version="1.1">
   <schemas>
     <schema
       official="yes"
       schema-lang="DTD"
       location="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd"/>
     <schema
       official="no"
       schema-lang="RNG"
       location="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/rng/svg11.rng"/>
   </schemas>
</language>

<language
   name="SVG Tiny"
   ns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg";
   version="1.1"
   profile="tiny">
   <schemas>
     <schema
       official="yes"
       schema-lang="DTD"
       location="http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11-tiny.dtd"/>
   </schemas>
</language>

SVG Tiny for example has baseProfile="", other languages might use 
different names; standardization would help (eg a TAG action item?).

Tobi

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http://www.pinkjuice.com/