[dsdl-discuss] FW: DSDL: Physical validation

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 09:48, Jeni Tennison wrote:
> Hi Martin, Alex,
>
> I had a chat with Pete Rogers and Thomas Nichols after Alex's DSDL
> talk, trying to get to the bottom of Pete's points about validating
> the prefixes that are used within a document.
>
> My conclusion from that chat was that, while most of DSDL is
> (properly) based on validating the logical structure of an XML
> document, there should be a Part that looks at validating its
*physical* structure.
>
> Here are some examples of the kinds of physical validation that one
> might require:
>
> * The document must use namespaces sanely (as defined in
> http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200204/msg00170.html)
>
> * The document must associate the namespace
> "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" with the prefix "xsl"
>
> * Namespace declarations must be placed on particular elements (this
> requirement is particularly relevant when mixing namespaces and
DTDs;
> see eBooks as an example)
>
> * Content of the <script> element must be escaped with a CDATA
> section
>
> * The <foo> element must be inserted using the &foo; entity
>
> * Specific characters must be represented using particular entities
> (e.g. non-breaking spaces as &nbsp;)
>
> * Specific characters must be included as native characters rather
than
> as entities or character references
>
> * Character references must use the hexadecimal version rather than
the
> decimal version of the character's codepoint
>
> * Particular elements, when empty, must be represented with a start
and
> end tag rather than an empty tag (and vice versa).
>
> (I have personal experience with most of the above constraints.)
>
> Of course, there's scope for specifying other physical constraints,
> such as which kind of quotes should be used around attribute values;
> what whitespace is allowed within tags or in element-only content; and
so on.
> A physical schema language would have to decide which physical
> features to constrain.
>
> Is there any room in DSDL for such a schema language?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeni

This proposal needs to be considered in our discussion on DSDL in
Amsterdam next month. Not sure it's really in our remit, but it does
carry implications for what a pipelining approach to validation
management might be able to provide in the way of additional
functionality

Martin Bryan

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