Re: system IDs and URIs

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Lauren Wood <lauren@softquad.com> was heard to say:
| On 17 May 2001, Norman Walsh wrote:
| 
| > / Lauren Wood <lauren@softquad.com> was heard to say:
| > | John raises an issue: why we treat system IDs and other URIs separately.
| 
| > We treat them differently because system identifiers and URIs are
| > different.  While it's true that all system identifiers must be URIs,
| > the converse is not true. More to the point, the XML REC speaks of
| > public and system identifiers, TR9401 catalogs speak of public and
| > system identifiers, and users speak of public and system identifiers.
| 
| To me, the main reason for having generic URIs is to allow mapping 
| of items such as stylesheets from the stylesheet PI, which isn't 
| defined as a system identifier, and potentially other URIs which 
| also aren't defined as system identifiers. I would not like to lose 
| this ability.

Without putting words in John's mouth, I believe that his position is
that we should have only a 'uri' entry type, that the 'system' entry
type is unnecessary.

While that may be technically true in some sense, I remain convinced
that conflating them would be a bad thing.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM   | Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as
XML Standards Engineer | one; but two rascals can be ten times as
Technology Dev. Group  | vicious as one.--George Bernard Shaw
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