use of indirection. Indirection allows us to point to things
(e.g., entity sets, partial documents, graphics, stylesheets)
independent of their physical locations. We name things IN the
less editable location (the document, the DTD, the XSD, ...) and
SOMEPLACE ELSE we associate the name with a file location.
Even in it's simplest form this indirection allows me to send a
real XML document (at least in my world few real XML documents
exist in only one file) to someone who will be able to read and
use it without editing the document. They may have to edit the
catalog file, but the document is protected.
I could go on and on about the power of indirection in XML (and I
think I did at some conference or other not too long ago), but I'll
refrain here. My point is that indirection is basic to the practice
of XML (and to SGML, for that matter).
Any standard, specification, or agreement that could move physical
pointers out of documents but that puts them into the document
instead is parasitic. It saps one of the key strengths of good
XML practice. It encourages arbitrary editing of documents and
reduces the reliability of XML documents.
I don't know how you feel about it, but I want to strictly control
which applications, and which people, are allowed to change my
documents. Many more tools, and people, are allowed to read
documents than are allowed to change them. A PI such as we are
talking about would require that people, without guidance and
protection of a schema-aware tool, would be editing raw files
in order to change the PI. And once they were in there, with
write permission, who knows what else they would do.
-- Tommie
--
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B. Tommie Usdin mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Phone: 301/315-9631
Suite 207 Direct Line: 301/315-9634
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in XML and SGML
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