Public Comment

[comment-form@oasis-open.org]

Comment from: dennis.hamilton@acm.org

Name: Dennis E. Hamilton
Title: System Architect
Organization: NuovoDoc
Regarding Specification: OpenDocument 1.0

In the OpenDocument-v1.0-os.sxw rendition of the ODF specification, I notice that the XML documents all have DOCTYPE DTD declarations at the front, such as

<!DOCTYPE manifest:manifest PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD Manifest 1.0//EN" "Manifest.dtd">

and  

<!DOCTYPE office:document-content PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd">

These DTDs use relative URLs, so a validating XML processor will reject the document until the DTD can be located and added to the processor's cache, or some other arrangement made.

I understand this is not the responsibility of the OASIS OpenDocument TC (except it's offered as a document in the ODF format, yes?).  

This situation leads me to wonder what the ODF might have to say about the proper XML prolog usage in ODF documents and their parts.  And if having a DTD is appropriate, will the TC provide a "default" one that can be used for people such as myself who are very happy to use DTDs (along with schemas) in interchange of XML documents.