Re: Catalog circularity

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 12:06 2001 05 23 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
>From the comments list:
>
>  How should a catalog processor behave if it encounters a circular
>  dependency, e.g. firstcatalog.cat contains a <delegatePublic>
>  pointing to secondcatalog.cat which in turn contains a <nextCatalog>
>  pointing back to firstcatalog.cat?  Should it simply ignore the
>  reference, or should it report an error?
>
>Comments?
>
>I think that we have to make this an error that must be detected.


Must?  What if the <nextCatalog> contains a URL that points to
a document that start an infinite redirect loop?  Do we have
to detect that error?  Life is full of uncertainties these days,
especially on the web.  "Must detect" seems a bit strong to me.
Besides, we'd have to be careful about the wording.  Is it an
error if the circular <nextCatalog> is the third <nextCatalog>
in the current catalog entry file and a match is found in the
catalog entry file referenced by the second <nextCatalog>?

I think we're safer with some weasel words about "implementations
may be smart, or they may let careless users shoot themselves in
their feet" rather than "must detect the error."

paul