Re: System URIs

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 12:17 2001 05 26 +0100, Rob Lugt wrote:
>Paul Grosso wrote:
>> I agree with making the spec clearer, but I disagree with doing
>> normalization (except that defined for public ids).  We should
>> make it clear we are only talking about the standard XML 1.0
>> normalization of CDATA attributes.  We should not (and I claim
>> can not) do any supposed uri-related normalization.
>
>I think we probably all agree that the value of the systemId or name
>attribute should match exactly the contents of the SystemLiteral in the xml
>document which is being processed.
>
>I think the confusion comes from the fact that XML 1.0, section 4.2.2
>describes a process of escaping certain characters within the SystemLiteral.
>But XML 1.0 is a bit vague, it doesn't say when this escaping should be
>performed or by whom.  So it is unclear if the SystemLiteral will have been
>escaped before it is supplied to the EntityResolver.

Interesting, I admit to not remembering this part of XML 1.0 in detail.
It seems pretty bogus to me.  It was introduced by Erratum 78, and now
I question that erratum.  Production [11] makes it clear that system
literals can contain any characters, and that should stand.  When (and
only when) the string matching the SystemLiteral terminal in the language
is interpreted as a URI reference, it may need to be escaped before passing
it around the web.  But this part of XML 1.0 cannot be saying that the
SystemLiteral in the XML file cannot contain certain characters, and there
is no reason to be doing URI ref escaping before passing the string to the
catalog resolver.  The escaping talked about in 4.2.2 of XML 1.0 should
happen only when the final URI is determined (after catalog resolution
and/or absolutization) just before being "sent out" to the server.

Maybe I should raise this issue with the XML Core WG too.

paul