[dsdl-discuss] Synchronization of the OASIS RELAX NG Compact Syntax and the ISO/IEC 19757-2 AMENDMENT 1: Compact Syntax

1. Problems

The compact syntax of RELAX NG is defined by two specifications, namely
OASIS RELAX NG Compact Syntax (OASIS RNC for short) and ISO/IEC 19757-2
AMENDMENT 1: Compact Syntax (Amd1 for short). Unfortunately, there are
some important differences between these specifications. First, OASIS
RNC does not have the media type registration of
application/relax-ng-compact-sy ntax, while Amd1 does. Second, Amd1
does not provide semantics, while OASIS RNC does. Third, references and
bibliographies of the OASIS RNC are different from those of Amd1.

2. Proposal

OASIS RNC should be complete, since developers rely on this spec. In
particular, the media type registration of application/relax-ng-compact-syntax
should be added to OASIS RNC. OASIS RELAX NG TC can do this by
publishing a new OASIS committee specification or OASIS standard.

The addition of the semantics to Amd1 is a long term goal. It
probably requires the republish of Amd1. Minor bugs should be
fixed by technical corrigenda.

2.1 Minor bugs of Amd1

1) "RELAX NG DTD Compatibility" is not referenced.

Since annotations are used in C.5 of Amd1, this document should ideally
be cited as a normative reference. However, since it is merely an
OASIS committee specification, it cannot become a normative reference
of an ISO/IEC standard. All we can do is to add an entry in the
bibliography of Amd1.

2) Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 are not referenced.

Since the compact syntax has a escape mechanism for Unicode characters,
ISO/IEC 10646 should be cited as normative references. It is
not clear whether Unicode can be added as a normative reference of an
ISO/IEC standard, but 10646 can certainly be added.

3) "Guidelines for using W3C XML Schema Datatypes with RELAX NG" is not
   referenced.

Since an example in C.4 references to a datatype in W3C XML Schema
Part 2, this document should be referenced as an entry in the
bibliography of Amd1.

4) "W3C XML Schema Part 2" is referenced incorrectly.

This document is already referenced as an entry in the bibliography of
Amd1. It is used to define "NCName", which is used in the BNF in Amd1.
However, OASIS RNC does NOT use W3C XML Schema for defining "NCName",
but rather relies on "Namespaces in XML".

I believe that OASIS RNC is correct and Amd1 is incorrect,
since NCName as defined in W3C XML Schema does not allow the
escape mechanism of RNC. Moreover, NCName as defined in W3C XML
Schema allows leading/trailing whitespace, which should not be
allowed.

3. Misc

1)

Amd1 says "Add the following sentence at the end of Clause 5", where
the following sentence is "An alternative compact syntax is described in Annex C."

Since Clause 5 of 19757-2 is "Data model", this instuction is incorrect.
Rather, this sentence should be added at the end of Clause 6, which is
"Full syntax".

2)

C.7 of Amd1 says that the media type for RNC is "being reviewed by the
IESG". However, since it is already registered at IANA.

Cheers,
Makoto

--
DSDL members discussion list
To unsubscribe, please send a message with the
command  "unsubscribe" to dsdl-discuss-request@dsdl.org
(mailto:dsdl-discuss-request@dsdl.org?Subject=unsubscribe)