Re: [xep-support] Validation fails on non-FO, Non-RX Namespace Attributes

From: Eliot Kimber (drmacro@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 05:31:35 PDT


--- David Tolpin <dvd@renderx.com> wrote:
> > I do not think that XEP should be complaining
> about
> > any non-FO or non RX attributes. At a minimum, it
>
> Eliot,
>
> good point, but the purpose of the validation pass
> is make
> sure that only things explicitely allowed are passed
> to the kernel.

I know that there's some ambiguity about what the use
of name spaces mean, but I don't see how anything
*outside* the FO name space should be a concern to the
FO processor for validation purposes or otherwise--it
should be ignoring anything not in the FO name space,
except for any extensions it chooses to recognize (and
it would be really nice if XEP recognized and
implemented Antenna House's extensions (and visa
versa), but that's another discussion).

This is not just a comment for XEP but for all XML
processors--one point of XML name spaces is that it
allows you to reliably ignore things. [Of course, this
is just my opinion and I'm not sure the specs are
solid enough on this for me to point to an authority,
but I feel pretty strongly that this is how name
spaces should be treated as a rule.]

I would be fine if the validator reported unrecognized
stuff with an informational message (e.g., "ignoring
attribute in unknown name space") or a warning, but I
do not consider the use of non-FO namespaced things to
be *an error* at any time. That is, the use or non-use
of non-FO name spaces for attributes *cannot affect
the validity* of the FO-spaced aspects of an FO
document. Therefore, their use should not cause
validation failures.

Usability point: this feature caused my first attempt
to use the product to fail in an unexpected,
confusing, and difficult-to-workaround fashion. That's
not a good first impression.

Using the docs, I tried to set the validation to false
(using the run.bat script) but it didn't work. Here's
the command-line I specified:

c:\XEP\run.bat -DVALIDATE=false workflow.fo

And got this response:

{!cannot open false: file not found}
[input workflow-xplore.fo]
...

I suspect this is a side effect of hinkiness in
Window's batch processing--I've had similar problems
with batch files I've built.

More positive note: the validation feature is very
important and I'm glad it's there--XSL Formatter's
lack of validation has bitten me a few times. I just
think it's being a bit over protective on this point.

When I removed the axf:outline-level attributes, XEP
was otherwise happy and produced output almost
identical to AHXF (it failed to render some stuff but
I'm not sure why yet--might be a font issue or user
error, so I'm not ready to ask about it yet).

Cheers,

Eliot Kimber
ISOGEN International

=====
Eliot Kimber
Austin, TX

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