Subject: Re: XML point

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 20:48:13 GMT

>In the meeting today, Frank asserted that, under the current attachments
>scheme, a validating XML parser would validate the attachments.  This
>appears not to be the case; section 4.4.6 of the XML spec states:
>
>     When the name of an unparsed entity appears as a token in the
>     value of an attribute of declared type ENTITY or ENTITIES, a
>     validating processor must inform the application of the system
>     and public (if any) identifiers for both the entity and its
>     associated notation.

<fd>The "unparsed entity" in the Internal DTD is not referenced, I agree. 
This is just the declaration. It wouldn't make sense to resolve this until 
a reference to it is found in the body of the document instance. But when 
the entity is referenced in the body, not the Internal DTD, it _can_ be 
referenced. This is indicated in section 4.4.3, I believe.

When an XML processor recognizes a reference to a parsed entity, in order 
to validate the document, the processor must include its replacement text. If the entity is external, and the processor is not 
attempting to validate the XML document, the processor may, but need not, include the entity's replacement text. If a non-validating 
parser does not include the replacement text, it must inform the 
application that it recognized, but did not read, the entity.

Right?</fd>

<SNIP>

>For this reason (and because the notation scheme for typing does not
>provide any information to anybody that doesn't know the notation names
>used by the sender), I assert again that the <!ENTITY>-based scheme
>gives no benefit over a src=uri attribute.

<fd>So far have spoken with one of the document editors, Doug Royer. Still 
have to talk to Surendra Reddy. But, Doug and I think that for another, 
more compelling reason it might make sense to have the content model in 
iCalendar XML DTD for the "attach" element type set to PCDATA (e.g., 
specify an absolute URI in the value). That would be that users of the 
standard format, defined by RFC 2445, are currently allowed to just 
specify an absolute URI text string value. It makes sense to allow this 
same level of simplicity for the XML representation. In addition, in both 
cases, it now appears that the "iCalendar" application will have to go and 
verify the validity of the value. If it is okay with Surendra, we will go 
ahead and make this change for the content model of the iCalendar XML DTD 
element types that take a URI value. Hope that is okay with you.</fd>