Re: PI section for spec

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 09:46 2001 04 02 +0100, Tony Coates wrote:
>Authors need the ability to test the effect of catalog changes locally, so 
>that users who share the same catalog-aware application are not affected 
>during testing. However, when processing large collections of documents, it 
>must be possible to ignore any and all test settings and process all 
>documents identically. 

I don't think I understand the above.  Perhaps you can explain it on the 
telcon.  Since all apps must have some way for the user to specify the
catalog already, I'm unclear on how the above motivates the need for
a PI.

>This leads to the following requirements:
>
>   1.  Authors must be able to set the starting catalog on a per-document
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What is a starting catalog?  What catalog entry files are processed
after the starting one, if any?

>       basis, overriding the default start catalog for their
>       application; 

What does "per-document" mean?  What catalog do you use, say, in an
editor after it's read such a PI but then goes to edit another document?

>   2.  It must be possible to disable the use of per-document starting
>       catalogs as and when required. 
>
>XML Catalogs support these requirements through the use of a processing
>instruction, "oasis-xml-catalog", which allows the starting catalog to
> be set for a particular document. For example, in
>
><?xml version="1.0"?>
><?oasis-xml-catalog catalog="test/catalog/draft-catalog.xml"?>
><catalog>
>  ...
></catalog>
>
>the URL for the starting catalog is "test/catalog/draft-catalog.xml". 
>The URL can be either (i) absolute or (ii) relative to the document 
>which contains the processing instruction. The "oasis-xml-catalog" 
>processing instruction must appear before the opening <catalog> tag, 
>otherwise it is ignored.

What if there are two such PIs?  What if there is a PI in the external
subset and then also in the instance?

>Catalog-aware applications must support the "oasis-xml-catalog" 
>processing instruction, and must also provide a facility which
>allows a user to request that any and all "oasis-xml-catalog" 
>processing instructions are ignored.
>
>Note: Catalog-aware applications must allow the name of this 
>processing instruction to be changed from "oasis-xml-catalog"
>using an XML notation declaration which references the public ID 
>shown in the following example:
>
><!NOTATION my-name-for-oasis-xml-catalog
>           "-//OASIS::TC::ER//STARTING XML CATALOG//EN//1.0">

What is the point of this extra complication?

paul