[dsdl-discuss] Re: DIS XML for Part 3 with disposition of

 
The WG1 meeting discussed this morning the proposal to add svrl:
namespace qualifiers to Annex D of Part 3. The current proposal is
confusing in two aspects:

1) The elements used in tests that are qualified by the svrl: namespace
are defined in a DTD. The only reference to the svrl: namespace within
this DTD is in a xmlns namespace attribute, which is not a standardized
mechanism for defining namespaces that apply to DTDs and does not
conform the with the rules proposed for Part 9 of DSDL.

2) The namespace is not declared formally as a namespace for the schema:
it is only declared in a Schematron specific way. Even though the
namespace is only used within attribute values we feel that it should be
declared at the top-most level to prevent two definitions of svrl:
occurring in a rule set and to avoid the possiblity that users may think
from the example that they must apply namespaces to all elements they
wish to test.

Point 1 could be overcome by replacing the DTD with a RNC definition
that could have the namespace formally applied to it (a Trang RNC
version of the DTD is attached as a proposed replacement). Point 2 could
be overcome by adding an xmlns:svrl declaration to the sch:schema
element, even if this declaration will never be used in a testable
situation.

Another suggestion made is that the sch:ns attribute should be renamed
sch:ns-prefix-binding to make it clear that this is not something that
is applied immediately but only occurs within schematron output. The
wording in the last para of 5.4.7 needs to be reviewed to make the
relationship between the tested/output namespaces and the schema
rules/input namespaces clearer.

Martin Bryan, WG1 Acting Convenor

> I believe that it was agreed to namespace-qualify SVRL, but
> it is not namespace-qualified.

I thought we had agreed that no namespace was needed, when we discussed
this
in Cambridge. The reason was that namespaces are used to allow
modularity. SVRL was not developed as a format that would be a module
but
as a standalone format to help with conformance-testing of
implementations, with the aid of some future, external test suite (which
I
am working on at the moment). A namespace is an unneccessary
complication
for a standalone language.

I guess if there is some intention to use SVRL as an output language for
a
validator in use, then there might indeed be some use for a namespace.
(But I have never even checked how suitable/optimal SVRL is for that
purpose.)

> Since I am likely to use SVRL in a Japanese government project, I
care.
> Is it possible to fix this before publishing the DIS?

If this is a Japanese requirement, we should do it!

The revised XML text for the annex is attached, if we can do it at this
stage: it involves

 i) adding xmlns CDATA "http://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/svrl" to the ATTLIST
for schematron-output in the DTD
 ii) adding an <sch:ns> in the Schematron schema
 iii) adding svrl: prefix to all element Qnames in attributes.

There is no change to narrative text. The pagination effect should be an
extra 3 lines. I note that this change effects no current
implementations
and does not change semantics.

And if there is a requirement from the Japanese that every new XML
language is in an XML Namespace, for management or SOAP enveloping
reasons, then perhaps they might like to raise it at SC34 as a general
policy. (For publishing, I have never seen namespaces used, for the
usual
reasons that i) publishers need entity references and hence DTDs, and
ii)
that publishing DTDs tend to be old and evolving rather than new
vocabularies. So I am loath to use them except where modularity is
needed.)

Thanks to Murata-san and Martin for following up on this.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

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