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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Choosing a target name for a processing instruction
 Somewhat the problem that X3D had to solve too. An XML specification without a semantic/object model or at the very least, natural language descriptions of the business rules for handling the data in a limited set of cases and handling the specification itself in all cases is a job 1/4 done. This becomes more obvious if the language is intended to control rendering and behavior. MusicML possibly qualifies (any behavioral/rendering notation does). It isn't as obvious in the data transport game. As to PIs, the fact that so many XML processors don't handle them says the XML specification designers' job was only 1/2 done. MusicML is trying to use them for what they were intended for only to discover that XML processor implementors dropped the ball for technical religious reasons and that the specification winked at that and nudged it along. PIs ARE out-of-band. That's the whole point. Only very small groups flying under the radar can keep an XML or any local specification with global markets coherent. It's a dynamic universe because local semantics are the only kind there are. As the reach increases, so does the noise. The secret of Extensible ML is that it isn't. len From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:rjelliffe@a...] A standard is an agreement. So talk to the major implementors of MusicXML and see what they can cope with. Figure out your preferred position, and see whether it disrupts anyone; agreement doesn't mean giving up leadership. MusicXML should set a policy for extensions. ("XML Governance" is an emerging discipline.) A good policy would be "An implementation of MusicXML should ignore any attributes in the document that are not in the base DTD used." This has the expense that a non-validating application cannot detect misspelled attributes, but it might still be the good policy. If you find that the MusicXML-accepting applications have indeed been written robustly (to ignore foreign attributes) and some music marked up using the new attributes will still play satisfactorily in applications written for the old DTD (i.e. the syntax and the semantics are extensible) then you should be OK. It is very common that specs have a version number, but don't actually set any policy for them. In particular, for differences between minor and major versions. The way things stand, you would expect a major version change to be a new namespace (if the original used namespaces), a minor change to just add a few elements or attributes, and a change that involves adding a new module of functionality to have that functionality in a different explicit namespace. 
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