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Re: URNs as SYSTEM IDs

• From: Michael Mealling <michael@b...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 10:42:20 -0500

----- Forwarded message from Michael Mealling <michael@b...> -----

Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 08:17:43 -0500
From: Michael Mealling <michael@b...>
Subject: Re: URNs as SYSTEM IDs
In-reply-to: <"from simonstl"@simonstl.com>
To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Reply-to: michaelm@n...
User-Agent: Mutt/1.1.2i

On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 03:48:52PM -0500, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> At 12:37 PM 11/22/00 -0800, Joe English wrote:
> >PUBLIC ID resolution doesn't need to be universally deployed
> >for it to be useful.  In many scenarios, out of all the software
> >that might be used to process an XML document, only one -- the
> >document's author's validator -- really needs PUBLIC ID support.
> >All other document consumers should be able to ignore the
> ><!DOCTYPE ...> declaration entirely as long as the DTD
> >makes no essential InfoSet contributions.
> 
> Unfortunately, the use of URNs for SystemLiterals makes PUBLIC a more
> important option than it is when URLs are used.  Processors which lack
> PUBLIC identifier processing and which receive documents using URNs as
> SystemLiterals are pretty much stuck, since they can't get to the DTD at all.

This really isn't intended to be the general case. It came up because
I was writing a standard that had a DTD in it. XML won't let you
use a PUBLIC id without a SYSTEM id so I was stuck with three options
for what to put in the standards document:

1) use "file:/dev/null"
2) use a real URL and watch that poor server get the hell banged out of
   it because everyone was downloading the DTD because they were to lazy
   to use an entity resolver
3) use soemthing that wasn't resolvable but had more name like qualities that
   would force the implementor to use an entity resolver...

What should I have done? This will come up often and we (the IETF) needs
to right solution. I can easily remove any mention of DTDs and URNs
if needed....

-MM

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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
Sr. Research Engineer   |   www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett     | ICQ#:         14198821
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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
Sr. Research Engineer   |   www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett     | ICQ#:         14198821
Network Solutions	|          www.lp.org          |  michaelm@n...

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