Re: [entity-resolution-comment] Some queries on the XML Catalogs spec

["Rob Lugt" <roblugt@elcel.com>]

Paul Grosso wrote:
> >Is the system identifier input to the resolver the system identifier
> >as it appears in the document, or the result of absolutizing that?
> >Presumably the latter, but it doesn't seem to say that in section 7.1.
>
> It should be the former, though I understand some processors such as
> SAX make this difficult.  But I believe it should definitely be the
former.
> Otherwise, how could you make an entry that worked, for example, for:
>
>   <!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "docbook.dtd">
>
Hi Paul,

I believe that system identifiers should be nomalized but not absolutized
prior to comparison. [1]
This point was raised in the public discussion lists and resulted in a
request to change SAX [2] to be more accomodating.  Of course RXP has no
such restrictions ;-)

>
> Personally, I'd think it would be fine to treat the XML catalog as
> well-formed XML and then do any error checking you wish--including
> validating it against a built-in DTD.

While detecting catalog errors does seem to be a good idea, validating
against a DTD may not be very useful given that section 6 of the spec
states...
"Elements and attributes from other namespaces are are allowed, but they
must be ignored for the purposes of resolution defined by this Standard. If
an element is ignored, all of its descendants must also be ignored,
regardless of their namespace."

Best regards
Rob Lugt
ElCel Technology
http://www.elcel.com

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/spec.html#sysid-norm
[2]
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=434478&group_id=294
49&atid=396222