Re: Comments on latest draft

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 11:47 2001 06 13 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
>/ Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com> was heard to say:
>| >Given
>| >
>| >  <catalog xml:base="file:///share/doctypes/">
>| >
>| >    <rewriteSystem systemIdStartString="http://example.com/"
>| >                   rewritePrefix="example/">
>| >
>| >  </catalog>
>| >
>| >If this the only catalog entry file, and the resolver is asked to
>| >resolve, "http://example.com/dtds/foo.dtd", what does it return:
>| >
>| >1. "example/dtds/foo.dtd"
>| >
>| >or
>| >
>| >2. "file:///share/doctypes/example/dtds/foo.dtd"
>| >
>| >As the 12 Jun draft is written, I think the result is 1, but I now
>| >think the answer should really be 2.
>| 
>| I think it should be 1, and then "example/dtds/foo.dtd" gets
>| absolutized according to the base URI in force at the point where
>| the "http://example.com/dtds/foo.dtd" was found.  For example, I
>| might have packaged my document in a directory that also contained
>| an example/dtds/ directory that mirrored the example.com/dtds/ site,
>| and then I send that directory (containing the document and that
>| example/dtds/ stuff) along with my catalog off to you.
>
>If you sent the catalog, then you can use this:
>
>   <catalog>
>     <rewriteSystem systemIdStartString="http://example.com/"
>                    rewritePrefix="example/">
>   </catalog>
>
>And since catalog is presumably in your mirrored directory, you'll get
>the result you want.
>
>That may not, however, change your mind.
>
>One underlying concern I have is that if we go with 1 from above, then
>rewrite is the only case where the catalog does not return an absolute
>URI reference.


It is true that the rewrites would be the only entry types where
what is returned is a string, not an absolute URI reference, but
that is a reasonable result of their semantics.

Here's another scenario.  The document references 57 graphics all
with system ids of the form "../graphics/graphXX.jpg" and 23 external
text entities all of the form "cases/caseYY.xml".  But I've got my
subdirs setup so that my graphics subdir is a sibling of my document 
and my text entities are all in "mycases/".  So I want to be able to say:

   <catalog>
     <rewriteSystem systemIdStartString="../graphics/"
                    rewritePrefix="graphics/">
     <rewriteSystem systemIdStartString="cases"
                    rewritePrefix="mycases">
   </catalog>

I don't want to have to put absolute paths into my rewritePrefix
because I'm planning to zip up my entire document&entities directory 
and move it somewhere else, and I don't want to have abs paths 
hardwired into things (that is the advantage of relative paths
in the first place).

And I don't want to rely on the subtle fact of where my catalog
is, partly because that is fragile and partly because I may well
want to have my catalog in some other location unrelated to this
document directory (for example, I often keep my catalogs in my
"doctype" directory where I keep all my DTDs).

paul