[topicmapmail] ["Jonathan Marsh" <jmarsh@microsoft.com>] RE: XML Base question

Fri, 23 May 2003 02:48:48 +0100

Jonathan Marsh wrote:
> You are off base ;-)  We are only talking about same document references
> such as #foo.
> 
> The example you give is not relevant to the section 4.2 or RFC 2396.
> Translating your HTML example to XML we have:
> 
>   <HTML xml:base="http://www.aviary.com/products/intro.html">
>    <HEAD>
>      <TITLE>Our Products</TITLE>
>    </HEAD>
> 
>    <BODY>
>      <P>Have you seen our <A href="../cages/birds.gif">Bird
> Cages</A>?</P>
>    </BODY>
>   </HTML>
> 
> with the same results.
> 
> I note that if you want a relative reference to id "foo" relative to the
> current base (and not to the same document), you would write it ".#foo".
> I think RFC 2396 is kind of broken by calling out special treatment for
> same-document references, but that's not XML Base's problem.

".#foo"??  I wanna say, "you're kidding" but I'm guessing you're not.
And that actually works anywhere? That's (pardon my French) WEIRD. It
certainly doesn't support the base URI in any way that I would consider
intuitive, though I admit I'm just one lone voice in the wilderness;
for me to call it wrong in the face of so much expertise brought to bear
on the subject within the W3C would be foolish. Okay, I still think it's
wrong. That has to be the strangest design decision I've seen since the
idea of ending URIs with a "#".

My hat is off.

This really messes up our ability to express PSIs in documents portably.
Now there's no way to do express the base URI of the XTM document without
it falling victim to not sitting at its canonical server location. Ugh.
Why couldn't somebody talk sense into RFC 2396? Take it out into the
alley and beat the hell out of it or something.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim                         http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK                    .

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