Re: URI, SOI (off topic)

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 16:11 2000 11 21 -0800, Terry Allen wrote:
>It started:
>| <?xml version="1.0"?>
>| <!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/" [
>
>What I had in mind was that the SYSTEM identifier doesn't identify a 
>DTD or schema; it doesn't name a DTD or schema.
>You can map it to an SOI on your own system,
>but you can't use it to retrieve a DTD or schema by HTTP (which
>is what I thought Norm was doing in the example catalogue) without
>some additional machinery *beyond* a catalogue.  Am I wrong about
>that?

Provided I understand what you're saying, you are wrong.

A TR9401:1997 catalog containing:

SYSTEM "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/" 
	"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd"

should work--it does, for example, in Arbortext's Epic 4.0.

>| fine with tools that support the TR9401:1997 OASIS catalog, of
>| which there are a fair number including most of James Clark's
>| SGML tools and Arbortext's SGML and XML tools.  Given that this
>| OASIS TC is, in general terms, tasked with coming up with an XML 
>| format for what is basically the TR9401 catalog, why would you want
>| to ignore TR9401 tools or requestion the solutions to the problems 
>| that TR9401 already addresses?  
>
>I pointed out in the subject line and the body that this thread
>was off topic.  As for requestioning the solutions, I don't
>see why they shouldn't be reexamined.  But if you'd like me to shut 
>up, I shall.  

No, I didn't mean the above to close out discussion.  What I meant
was to suggest that I don't see anything in this discussion that
differs substantively from the discussion that led up to TR9401 and 
the problems that the existing TR9401 Resolution and implementations
thereof solve, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if you
have a misunderstanding of what TR9401 does (or a little of both).

>Do James's tools really fetch DTDs via HTTP given a URL
>such as
>
>	http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/

Um, the answer is either "no" or "not a well-formed question."
What you get back via HTTP given a URL depends on the server,
not the UA, so one can't really answer the question.  But the
answer is probably no--but that's not the right question.  The
question should be:

 Does a TR9401:1997-compliant tool really fetch the DTD when
 the instance says:
   <!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/">
 and the catalog includes:
  SYSTEM "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/" 
	"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" ?

And the answer to the above is yes.

paul