Re: [xml] more questions on catalogs

[Rick Jones <rick jones2 hp com>]

>   the master catalog will be  /etc/xml/catalog unless the system software
> have been installed differently.

how does the system software inform libxml2 that the master catalog is somewhere 
else - or are all the applcations on the system supposed to start setting 
environment varibles?

> > I'm still a little fuzzy on why if libxml2 is expecting /etc/xml and 
> > libxml2 is ported to more than just Linux and so more than just the Linux 
> > Filesystem Standard, why it would rely on the OS to create /etc/xml, but if 
> > indeed, /etc/xml (where would that be under Windows?) is where libxml2 is 
> > going to look, and it would take a libxml2 source change for it to look 
> > elswhere rather than a configure option, I suppose I can consider /etc/xml 
> > an invariant.
>
>
>   yes, that's the default from an upstream point of view.
> But you should not rely on catalog being present. It's merely an accelerator
> or a way to keep instance identical in the case you may not have network
> access.
>   IMHO if you fully care about portability to any target OS then don't
> assume a catalog and build the paths in your software.

I think I'm about to fall into a Catch-22 - the reason I wanted to use catalogs 
was to deal with the situation where the system running netperf had the netperf 
DTD in a place other than the system running netserver.

The XML-encapsulated messages sent back and forth between netperf and netserver 
include the reference to the DTD, using SYSTEM and giving some canonical place 
such as http://www.netperf.org/netperf_docs.dtd/1.0  that each was going to be 
able to map, via the catalog, to wherever the user decided to install netperf 
and by extension its DTD - at present defaulting to /usr/local/share/netperf

A netperf may be running on windows, talking to netservers talking on linux, 
unix and windows, so I ass-u-me-d I needed something like the invariant of the 
SYSTEM spec in its cross-platform space (no issues of '/' vs '\' etc) and then 
the "conversion" to a local filename via the catalog.

But if you say I should be hardcoding paths into the software I'm back to square 
one aren't I?  I can see where I might be able to get by with hardcoding paths 
if netperf were just a single system application, but it is a multi-system, 
multi-platform application.

rick