[tei-council] time to really allow instance to name schema?

[Lou Burnard]

According to the edw89 draft the proposed mechanism
     * should be optional, ignorable, and over-ridable
     * should not be TEI-specific

If the first is a serious requirement, I cannot see any point in the 
proposal at all. Its only possible outcome might be a suggestion that 
specifying a schema this way is one amongst the many things you might do 
with a PI (but since you might also do the same thing another way, or 
other things the same way, why bother to make the suggestion?)

If the second is a serious requirement, then clearly there is littlethe 
TEI can do to achieve it!

Given that the proposal has already been discussed and failed to 
persuade one expert forum (the rng users group), why resurrect it now?

For the record, I think this is a waste of time. The most I think we 
should do in TEI P5 is to add a few sentences to SG (introductory 
chapter on XML) explaining how a schema might be associated with an 
instance, possibly giving the rationale for not doing it. And I'm not 
even sure about that.


Lou



Syd Bauman wrote:
> Dept: re-opening a can of worms :-)
> 
> Two straw-man proposals have been put forward to two separate groups
> for a PI that would permit an XML document instance to name a schema
> or schemas against which it is (supposed to be) valid. 
> 
> In April 2005 I wrote a document that at the time was circulated only
> among the TEI Council members:
>    http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/edw89.xml?style=printable
> 
> In July 2005 MURATA Makoto wrote a document that at the time was
> circulated to the new Relax NG user's mailing list:
>    http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~eb2m-mrt/hidden/spec.html
> 
> In both cases the documents are just proposals of their authors, not
> position papers of the organizations they sometimes represent. In
> both cases the syntax of a PI that an XML document may use to point
> to a schema is described. In both cases the intent is that the PI
> itself is optional and repeatable, and that while processors may want
> to make use of the information, they are not required to.
> 
> This issue fostered some discussion on the rng-users list back in
> summer 2005, with some objecting to the idea of a schema-pointing PI
> (Tommie Usdin I recall was among them).
> 
> TEI P5 needs to be finished up soon, and it would be a good idea, I
> think, to have this particular issue settled well before it is
> published. Because TEI is so customizable, it is quite helpful for
> the user if an instance can point to its schema. In general, the TEI
> would be as happy or happier if someone else (read OASIS) came up
> with the specification for this process, so that TEI P5 could refer
> to it. My instinct is that a PI is the right place for this
> information, but I'm not even sure that is a given.
> 
> I don't think there is really that much work to be done in this area
> to come up with a unified proposal. Does any one else think it is
> worth any effort? Is this something that comes under the jurisdiction
> of the OASIS Relax NG Technical Committee? 
> 
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