[dsdl-discuss] Re: Part 4

Murata-san

My first quick read through the nearly complete draft of Part 4 which you
have supplied this week confirms my belief that we need a CD ballot rather
than an FCD at this stage. While I haven't had time to study the models in
depth yet (which will take a lot more than three weeks) and cannot claim to
follow Clause 9 in detail (for which I will be seeking advice from a formal
grammar expert) I note a number of places where the text can be improved by
correcting typos and rephrasing certain statements prior to submission for
national body comment. This e-mail records these issues.

Introduction
The following paragraphs, taken from Part 1, could usefully be added at the
start of the Introduction to better set the scene:
"This International Standard defines a set of Document Schema Definition
Languages (DSDL) that can be used to specify one or more validation
processes performed against Extensible Stylesheet Language (XML) or Standard
Generalized Markup Language (SGML) documents. (XML is an application profile
SGML ISO 8879:1986.)

A document model is an expression of the constraints to be placed on the
structure and content of documents to be validated with the model. A number
of validation technologies are standardized in DSDL to complement those
already available as standards or from industry.

The main objective of this International Standard is to bring together
different validation-related tasks and expressions to form a single
extensible framework that allows technologies to work in series or in
parallel to produce a single or a set of validation results. The
extensibility of DSDL accommodates validation technologies not yet designed
or specified."

In the first of the current paragraphs, change "easily combine different" to
"allow the interworking of"

Add to the end of the second sentence in the second para "and provides
examples of its application"

NB. If comments relating to Clauses 6 and 8 given below are adopted then
references to these clauses will need to be removed and the numbering of
remaining clause references adjusted accordingly.

In the third paragraph change "Influenced" to "The draft was further
influenced" and delete "and the committee draft". Change "the final" to "a
revised"

1 Scope
Add "a" after "specifies".
Change "and attributes" to "or attributes"
Change "the schema languages" to "any schema languages, including those" [We
should not exclude the use of other schema languages with namespace control
of sets, including W3C Schemas.]

2 Normative References
What you have as an unnumbered note here is treated as normative text in
other parts. We need to decide on a common approach to this statement. As
the comment affects the interpretation of normative text I believe it should
be a normative paragraph rather than an informative note. [If it is retained
as a note it needs to be numbered in the same sequence as other notes!]

3 Terms and Definitions
The same term should not be defined more than once within the standard.
Terms copied from Part 2 should be removed and a reference to the
definitions in Part 2 should be made. (If any terms are taken from Part 3
they should be replaced by a cross-reference to this part.)

3.6 instance
The definition of instance should not be tied explicitly to RELAX NG: it
should be validatable against any schema.

3.14
Change "the schema" to "a schema"

3.15
After "specification of" insert "the model of"

3.17
Change "determine" to "determines"

3.18
Change "create" to "creates" and "invoke" to "invokes"

3.26
Change definition to read "an element for which a single namespace URI
applies to itself and all descendants"

The term mediaType used in the normative text needs defining in Clause 3

5.1
Remove first sentence and reorder sentences of first four paragraphs as
follows:

"XML documents representing schemas and instances shall be well-formed in
conformance with W3C XML and shall conform to the constraints of W3C
XML-Names. An XML document is represented by an element.

This abstract NVDL data model is an extension of the data model of RELAX-NG.
Names, contexts, attributes, and strings in the NVDL data model are
identical to those in the RELAX NG data model. Elements in the NVDL data
model are extended as describe in this clause.

An NVDL emenet consists of:"

In the paragraph following NOTE 1, change "(say ASN)" to "(ASN)" and "when
ASN" to "when the ASN". In the following paragraph change "(say ESN)" to
"(ESN)" and "when ESN" to "when the ESN". Also change the preceding "for an
element" to "for one or more elements in a given namespace"

EXAMPLE 1
Change "First, every" to "Every". Change "an XML declaration, comment and
processing instruction" to "the XML declaration and any comments or
processing instructions"

EXAMPLE 2 (and all examples based on this)
Do not use empty strings for attribute values. All attributes must be given
specific values, even if they are the same as the attribute names, or just
numbers. (Empty strings in double quotes are difficult to read.)

NB. To avoid confusion I would like to see all examples in the document
numbered consecutively so that no two examples have the same number (the
Directives allow this as an alternative numbering technique)

5.3
Change "XML document" to "XML instance"
Change "This process is done as follows." to "Decomposition is achieved
using the following rules:"
Change "Then, the attribute set of E is" to "The attribute set of E can then
be"
NB: This rule is unnecessarily strict as it means that an AS has to be
created for a namespace even if there are no attributes with that namespace.
The rule also fails to make it clear that whether only those namespaces
actually identified within the element are used for N, or whether all
namespaces currently in scope must be applied.]
In para preceding EXAMPLE 1, change "ES is represented by E" to "ES contains
those children of E that belong to N" and delete the last sentence.
In EXAMPLE 2, explain why attributes with no namespace need to be assigned a
separate ASN, and change 'two attributes of the namespace "".' to "two
attributes that have not been assigned a namespace prefix."
Change, twice, "It has no element slot nodes." to "It has no element or
attribute slot nodes."

5.4
At end of first sentence add "with the same namespace URI". Change "then ASN
is" to "the the ASN can be"
The EXAMPLE in this clause seems to be incorrect. There are two different
namespaces declared, which I believe is invalid. Rather than replacing $asn3
by its values $asn4 should have been should have been replaced by its values
as they share the containing element's namespace.

5.5 (and elsewhere)
Use suffixes for things like E1, E2 and Em, and use n in place of m (in some
clauses m and n are mixed indiscriminately)
The sentence preceding EXAMPLE 1 does not make sense, mainly becaus it does
not identify any requirement for attached elements to have matching
namespace URIs. The example shows two different URIs, which would seem to
defeat the purpose of namespace-based dispatching!
In EXAMPLE 2 change "5.3" to "5.2". You need to explain why there is no
reference to $esn2 but one to $esn1.

5.6
Change "be casted" to "be cast" and delete "This is done as follows."

5.7
Change, twice in the first paragraph and once in the note, "RELAX NG data
model" to "NVDL data model". [5.1 makes it clear that NVDL extends the RELAX
NG data model.]

6
Remove the RNG model to a normative Annex (which must procede informative
ones). Either replace this with a diagram of the model, or combine clauses
6, 7 and 8 under the heading of Full and Simplified Syntaxes and make
existing text of Clauses 6 and 8 the first and last paras of the new clause
(after suitable modification)
The pattern for MediaType is not adequate to correctly distinguish mediaType
definitions
Is the pattern for path adequate for correctly identifying paths?

7.1
Change "given in the previous clause" to "can be"
Is the last part of the last sentence actually true? ("an element" implies a
single object with no substructure)

7.8
Thie rule appear to force the root element's schemaType to override that of
any child, removing any chance of inheritence. Is this intended? If so add a
note explaining why it is required.

7.9
Change "value that is" to "value, which must be".

7.10
Change "value that is" to "value, which must be".

7.12
Change "in mode" to "with mode". Change Im and km to just in all cases (do
not mix km and lm, and do not use the ISO approved abbreviation for
kilometer, km, in this context)

I'll send in my comments on Clause 9 and the informative annexes when I've
had further chance to study them over the weekend.

Martin Bryan
WG1 Chair

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