[XML-SIG] State of the world

[Andrew Kuchling]

Another message from Lars.  (One clarification: I wasn't suggesting
that a DTD module be distributed separately.  If we agree that it
would be useful, it would be part of the basic package, and could be
part of the SAX or DOM implementations, or unconnected to either of
them.)

Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> 
> Hmm...  wouldn't there then have to be a way to save that XML
> declaration, in order to pass it back for subsequent parsing of the
> second document?  

Not unless there is information in it that we need. :)

> Another approach might be an end-of-XML document PI, that means the
> document is over, stop parsing now.  Would that make sense?

If we can't use the declaration: yes. Or we could just outlaw PIs and
other junk outside the root element and stop parsing when the root
element ends. That's possibly the cleanest solution of all since we
don't need to use the XML declaration as a delimiter.
 
> Is there anything else that should go into the basic package?  A
> module to parse DTDs, perhaps? 

xmlproc has that and I'd planned to make it into an API accessible
to clients, even down to tracking states in content models. (In fact
it is in part accessible already, but it needs more cleaning up
before anyone can rely on it.)

However, I'm a bit uncertain of how much sense it makes to distribute
that part separately. I've always thought of that as a part of what a
parser does, but maybe I have preconceived SGML notions about this
that don't fit XML. What do people think? I can be convinced to
distribute the DTD services as a separate module.

> That would pave the way for checking whether a document is 
> conformant to a DTD. 

Hmmm. This makes me think of a validating parser again, but I'll
agree that perhaps the DOM will need a separate DTD module. Stephane,
what do you think about this?

> BTW, I forgot one relevant spec: XSL, the Extensible Style Language.
> It doesn't seem to me as if we can do much about XSL at the moment;

That's right. The people who have insight into what the XSL WG is
doing keep repeating that the August proposal will be substantially
revised and some even say that those who implemented the proposal
will basically have wasted lots of effort.

> I'm also not clear whether it'll be
> JavaScript-specific, or more language-independent; seems to be the
> former...

Well, given that Netscape, Microsoft and Opera Software already have
implemented JavaScript I can understand that. Also, I'm not sure that
XSL can be made language-independent (like the DOM) in a sensible
way, although implementing PyXSL should be possible and useful, I 
think.

--Lars M.