Re: URI, SOI (off topic)

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Paul wrote:
| 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.

But Norm's example had as the rhs only soi="docbookx.dtd".
I assumed then that he wanted to send a GET to the URL of
the lhs with the additional info "send me docbookx.dtd", or
to concatenate the two before sending.
...
| 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).

I'm sure I miss some of the subtleties of TR9401, but the big
difference is that we now have URNs specified and in use.  That
means that we need to resolve them and also that we have a modern
equivalent in URL/URN to the SGML prototype concepts SYSTEM/PUBLIC.

| >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

It does depend on the server, but in Norm's example there were
multiple entities at the URL ending in /, so I could save the
question by asking whether James's tools really fetch DTDs,
ENTITYs, etc., all from the same URL ending in /.  To that 
I think we agree the answer is "no".

| 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.

I agree, and have even done it (cool!) but that wasn't Norm's example.  

regards, Terry