Note that I never published this. I now believe that RDF/XML provides an adequate solution to this problem. MB ============ Internet-Draft Mark Baker Expires: December, 2002 Idokorro Mobile, Inc. June 21, 2002 Generic Namespace Dispatch Behaviour for XML draft-baker-generic-xmlns-dispatch-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Abstract To date, the promise of constructing compound XML documents using XML namespace declarations, and having the resultant document be processed as a seamless whole, has not been realized. This document defines rules for processors and content that should allow a significant degree of generic processing to occur for many compound documents. These rules are then bound to a new generic XML media type, "application/xmld". 1. Introduction The registration of the application/xml and text/xml media types by RFC 3023 [XMLMIME], specified common behaviour for several important characteristics of these types for themselves, and for those types using the "+xml" suffix convention. These common characteristics include; the charset parameter and encoding considerations, base URI processing, fragment identifier interpretation, and others. One characteristic that wasn't specified is, where the document uses XML namespaces [XMLNS], how the processing of that document should relate to those declarations. Currently, all proposed IETF tree media types using the "+xml" naming convention, including XHTML, SOAP, SMIL, and the upcoming one for SVG, declare that if the root namespace of the document is the respective one of that content format, then that document should be initially processed by a processor of that format. This document aims to achieve two things. First, to lay out rules for how namespace declarations in documents can be used to dispatch processors for processing that content. And second, to bind this behaviour to a new generic XML media type. 2. Namespace dispatching The last paragraph of Section 3 of RFC 3023 reads; "An XML document labeled as text/xml or application/xml might contain namespace declarations, stylesheet-linking processing instructions (PIs), schema information, or other declarations that might be used to suggest how the document is to be processed. For example, a document might have the XHTML namespace and a reference to a CSS stylesheet. Such a document might be handled by applications that would use this information to dispatch the document for appropriate processing." The use of "might" here suggests the possibility that the document might not be dispatched in this way. In other words, RFC 3023 defines no consistent behaviour, it only suggests that the possibility exists that it may be interpreted this way. Certainly, there are many cases where this weak guarantee is inappropriate. As an example, consider this XML document; My document

My heading

According to RFC 3023, if a web server serves this content as either application/xml or text/xml, a web browser may either process it as "generic XML" (perhaps in a tree view, as in IE 5.0), or as XHTML, rendering the title and heading as expected with HTML/XHTML. RFC 3023 is also silent on how a document should be processed if the namespace is used to dispatch a processor. Consider this document, a slightly modified version of the above; My document

My heading number

According to RFC 3236 [XHTMLMED] Section 5, this is an XHTML document. Yet, according to the XSLT 1.0 Recommendation [XSLT], this document, when served as application/xml or text/xml, should be processed as an XSLT stylesheet. Clearly, some more specific rules are required about how XML documents using namespaces should be processed. 2.1 Out of scope As this document attempts to define an 80/20 solution for namespace dispatching, some topics invariably fall in the "20". For the moment, these include; o addressing other XML processing model issues o XML events (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-events/) o no attempt to define any meaning that crosses namespace boundaries, such as "id" o no support for XInclude (http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/) o no support for processors that produce documents or document fragments, and expect the output to be incorporated into the original document for re-processing However, the author welcomes input into how this specification can be further generalized without undue implementation or specification complexity. 3. Rules for namespace dispatching The intent of namespace dispatching is to use the namespace as Internet media types are currently used; as a means of choosing a software application to process the portion of a document using that namespace. That is, instead of a "mailcap" style [@@ref?] mapping of media types to applications, namespace dispatching requires a namespace to application mapping. The processing rules for namespace dispatching are presented below as both rules for dispatchable XML processors, and rules for content. 3.1 Conforming processors These are the rules that must be followed by software claiming to conform to this specification. 3.1.1 Only namespaces can specify processors At all points in a document, the namespace of the element currently being processed must be the authoritative determinant of the processor doing that processing, except in the case described in section 3.1.2. Note that some processors may be able to process multiple namespaces. If multiple processors for a particular namespace are available, this specification says nothing about which one should be used. 3.1.2 Permit dispatching to be overriden Some namespace processors may 3.2 Conforming content 3.2.1 Containment must be permitted The element within which an element from an alternate namespace exists, must explicitly permit that element being there (via its schema, if specified). 3.2.1.1 XML Schema interpretation XML Schema [XMLSCHP1] defines wildcards (Section 3.10) that specify different rules about how the containment of content from other namespaces is handled. For example, this declaration within a schema can be used to permit any namespace; In XML Schema parlance, this rule means; o if the schema is known, the element must not contain @@need to learn more about validation and the role of xsi:type @@need to cover DTDs(?), Relax NG. 3.2.2 Mandatory extension mechanisms must be respected Some XML based languages include a feature sometimes called a "mandatory extension mechanism" [EXTLANG]. SMIL, for example, defines the attribute "skip-content" that can be used to modify the behaviour of the element to which its bound, requiring that SMIL processors either process (and perhaps fail trying), or not process, the contained content. If the containing element uses a mandatory extension to require that contained content be understood, then 5. Registration of the "application/xmld" media type MIME media type name: application MIME subtype name: xmld Required parameters: none Optional parameters: charset This parameter has identical semantics to the charset parameter of the "application/xml" media type as specified in [XMLMIME]. Encoding considerations: Identical to those of "application/xml" as described in [XMLMIME], Section 3.2. Security considerations: Interoperability considerations: Published specification: This document. Applications which use this media type: No known applications currently use this media type. Additional information: Magic number: Same as [XMLMIME] Section 3.1 File extension: ".xml" may be used because [XMLMIME] suggests it be used for any XML content, but this may result in the content being served as text/xml or application/xml, removing the added benefits that this new media type provides. Macintosh File Type code: TEXT Person & email address to contact for further information: Mark Baker Intended usage: COMMON Author/Change controller: 4. Future considerations This document may need to consider these other issues at some point; o any generalized mandatory extension mechanism that arises in the context of XML and/or RDF 5. Authors' Addresses Mark A. Baker Idokorro Mobile, Inc. 44 Byward Market, Suite 240 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. K1N 7A2 tel:+1-613-789-1818 mailto:mbaker@idokorro.com mailto:distobj@acm.org 6. Acknowledgements TBD. 7. References [XML] Bray, T., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. and E. Maler, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation REC-xml, October 2000, . [XMLMIME] Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., Kohn, D., "XML Media Types", RFC 3023, January 2001. [EXTLANG] Berners-Lee, T., Connolly, D., "Web Architecture: Extensible Languages", W3C Note, February 1998. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/XHTMLplusSMIL/ [XSLT] http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt [XHTMLMED] "Registration of the application/xhtml+xml media type", RFC 3236, January 2002. Baker, M., Stark, P. 8. Appendices 8.1 Processing model feature consideration matrix This matrix reflects the thought process in trying to extract content and processing rules, by examining the interaction between schema wildcarding (such as seen in XML Schema), and the type of extension (mandatory or not). (schema) allow deny not-speced (mandatory) true (1) (3) (5) false (2) (4) (6) (1) if the schema for language foo explicitly permits content from language bar, do we require namespace dispatch on bar content? No, because foo processor is in control. It can punt if it wants though, but has to recognize that content (per the semantics of the mandatory extension mechanism in use). (2) same as for (1) except it doesn't have to recognize content in order to (optionally) punt. (3) a processor with knowledge of the schema should be able to "intercept" dispatch and process the sub-namespace it itself. (4) same as 3 (5) business as usual (6) business as usual 8.2 Options for binding to Internet media types Two of the alternative solutions to binding this behaviour to an Internet media type are presented here. 8.2.1. Redefine */xml and maybe the meaning of "+xml" This possibility involves making normative changes to RFC 3023 to associate this behaviour with application/xml, text/xml, and possibly of any type using the "+xml" convention. The advantage of this approach is that these types are well known and that much of the existing content out there being served as */xml conforms to the content rules specified here. The disadvantage is that not all content conforms, including any XSLT [XSLT] style sheet using the simplified stylesheet form. 8.2.2. Define a new media type We could define a new generic XML media type to which the rules specified here could be bound. An interesting consideration is whether or not this new type should use the "+xml" suffix. An advantage of doing this is that it can easily reuse all of the common behaviour of "+xml". The main disadvantage is that because dispatch behaviour within "+xml" types is undefined (see [XMLMIME] Section 3, last paragraph), a generic XML processor may not treat it properly, and may even make changes that change its conformance to the content rules specified here. For that reason, "+xml" will not be used. We might also want to consider specifying a suffix that custom types could use to indicate that, although they enable namespace dispatch and could be described with this new generic media type, they still have a good reason for needing their own media type. The processing behaviour of this new media type should also be consistent with the processing rules defined here. Currently, the requirements for this are unclear, so it will not be considered at this time.