[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: URIs, names and well known RDDL names, was: Re: Quick edit
> and in many cases we only care > about the values of variables of a particular type. So we establish a > convention that we will name our variables using the following > strategy: I'm glad that this analogy was brought up. Despite its flaws, it helped me spot a potential ambiguity with RDDL (that I hope isn't as flawed). Are we sure that we only care about variables (resources) of a particular type when dealing with RDDL? Going back to Jonathan's example: What if there were two schema resources defined in a directory? One's function (arcrole) was for editing and the other was for runtime validation. We were probably all thinking of the W3C's XML Schemas when he wrote that but it's entirely possible that either "schema" could be DTD, Relax, Schematron, or even a TREX pattern. When thinking in terms of stylesheets, it's even more reasonable to assume that multiple "style" arcroles could reference resources with different roles (either CSS or XSL). To help make things more concrete in my mind, I'm imagining an extremely simplified API (not that I think the spec should dicatate any specific implementation--although an RDDL infoset might be something to think about). If we want to lookup a resource by it's type (role), we'd use the following function: GetResourceByRole(rddl, role) If there were multiple resources with the same role, this function could return either the first one, last one, or all of them. In order to help disambiguate this function we'd use the following instead: GetResource(rddl, role, arcrole) This implies that we want a specific type of resource. I think we should allow RDDL processors to be a little more flexible. So when we only care about a a resource's function (arcrole) and expect we'll know how to process it regardless of it's type (role), we would use this function: GetResourceByArcrole(rddl, arcrole) (I realize that it's possible to have used the second function for all three cases and passing in null for the role or arcrole you didn't want to match but that's not important--this isn't a real API.) For all three functions, it's possible for multiple resources to be returned. So my questions are: Should xlink:arcrole be required? The third function's usefulness would be diminished if it was optional. Should the xlink:role/xlink:arcrole pair (assuming arcrole is not optional) be required to be unique in a given RDDL document? Using the second function isn't as reassuring as it could be since it could still return multiple resources if the pair wasn't required to be unique. (And for bonus points, is there a schema language currently available that can validate this requirement or should we invent a new one? ;-) Thanks, Jason.
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|