Re: [xml] passing the FPI to the DTD validator

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif pinkjuice com>]

Hi Daniel


> > [...] My catalog maps FPIs 
> > to local DTDs, I don't really want to be required to add mappings for 
> > all the canonical DTD URLs.
>   This is so incredibly fragile !


I see. (even if you don't shout :)
The OASIC catalog specification itself promotes this use
[Example 1. A DocBook XML Catalog File: docbook.xml.
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/spec-2001-08-06.html#d0e533
]
but I see your point.

Mapping canonical URLs to local paths is potentially more reliable, I agree.

Here's what my catalog looks like:
http://www.pinkjuice.com/howto/vimxml/setup.xml#catalogs

What would you recommend as most robust strategy?

I have

<public
publicId="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
uri="/etc/xml/w3c/xhtml/1_0/dtd/xhtml1-strict.dtd"/>

Do you recommend to add the following, or change the above to the 
following, or would you recommend a third strategy or syntax?
(or did I miss your point or misinterpret the spec?)

<uri
name="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";
uri="file:///etc/xml/w3c/xhtml/1_0/dtd/xhtml1-strict.dtd"/>

<ot>
As for how a validator can find out which schema to use I think that one 
good future strategy might be to not require DTD doctype declarations or 
commandline arguments, but instead check the namespace name (eg URI), 
and also check for version and profile attributes (perhaps there will 
even be xml:version and xml:profile in the future). Those could identify 
the language sufficiently so that the validator can fetch (via a new 
catalog) one or more corresponding schemata.
</ot>


> > I know that you don't want to add many more options to xmllint, but the 
> > functionality behind the suggested feature is already implemented; the 
> > option could be added easily.
>   Not arguing about that. I commited this in CVS,


Thanks :)

> but I really don't suggest
> people rely on FPI for XML processing. URL are mandatory for XML, that's
> the only reliable way to address XML resources.


Again, good point.

I think I'll change
http://www.pinkjuice.com/howto/vimxml/setup.xml#catalogs
to reflect your valuable insights.


Tobi


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