Public Comment

[comment-form@oasis-open.org]

Comment from: csalter@ca.ibm.com

What's the recommended approach for sharing xml catalogs that have concrete file system locations in them?  For example, I have a catalog with several entries like this...

<uri name="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/";
          uri="file:///D:/projects/oasis/docbook/website/"/>

Now I want to use this catalog on another machine where the 'project' directory is installed on the 'E:' drive.  So I'm assuming one would need some thing like this...

<rewriteURI uriStartString="file:///D:/project/"
            rewritePrefix="file:///E:/project/"/>

It seems to me it would be nice to have some convention when specifying file system URIs so that they can be easily 're-mapped' to actual drive names (and to make it clear at a glance where these substitutions are intended).   For example...

<uri name="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/";
          uri="/PROJECT_INSTALL_LOCATION/oasis/docbook/website/"/>

<rewriteURI uriStartString="/PROJECT_INSTALL_LOCATION"
            rewritePrefix="file:///E:/project/"/>

The next logical step would be to put move the rewrites containing the 'actual' file locations into a separate catalog file.  That way the 'main' catalog could be shared in a team repository and wouldn't need to be edited.  Only the small catalog containing rewrites to 'actual' file locations would ever need to be customized.

Any comments/suggestions ?