Re: XCatalog proposal draft 0.1

james anderson (James.Anderson@mecomnet.de)
Sat, 11 Jul 1998 00:24:00 +0200


John Cowan wrote:
>
> This is a proposal for XCatalogs, a system based on SGML/Open
> catalogs (Socats) for translating public identifiers to
> system identifiers in XML.
> 8. Open questions
>
> Should compliance require support for both syntaxes?

yes.
? are there mime type to identify these things, or would one trust the
extension in the resource name? or 'autodetect'?

> I think the Socat syntax is essential for backward compatibility
> with existing tools, and it is more compact (important for
> huge catalogs full of Delegate entries), but the XML instance syntax
> is more in the spirit of XML (and XSchema, etc.).
>
> If both syntaxes are supported, should Delegate and Extend entries
> be allowed to refer from one syntax to another,

yes: what benefit would there be from duplicating delegates / extensions?

> or should Socat
> catalogs refer only to other Socat catalogs and ditto for XML
> instance catalogs?
>

? what it the rational / history behind pruning the search at the first
partial match?