ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34N0853

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34

Information Technology --
Document Description and Processing Languages

TITLE:	Disposition of Comments to JTC 1/SC 34 N 801 - Text for CD ballot for ISO/IEC 19757-9: Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL) Part 9 - Namespace- and datatype-aware DTDs
SOURCE:	Mr. Francis Cave
PROJECT:	CD 19757-9: Information technology - Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) - Part 9: Datatype- and namespace-aware DTDs
PROJECT EDITOR:	Mr. Francis Cave
STATUS:	Disposition of comments
ACTION:	For information
DATE:	2007-03-24
DISTRIBUTION:	SC34 and Liaisons
REFER TO:	N0801 - 2006-11-22 - Text for CD ballot for ISO/IEC 19757-9: Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL) Part 9 - Namespace- and datatype-aware DTDs N0819 - 2007-02-22 - Summary of Voting on JTC 1/SC 34 N 801 - Text for CD ballot for ISO/IEC 19757-9: Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL) Part 9 - Namespace- and datatype-aware DTDs
REPLY TO:	Dr. James David Mason (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Chairman) Y-12 National Security Complex Bldg. 9113, M.S. 8208 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-8208 U.S.A. Telephone: +1 865 574-6973 Facsimile: +1 865 574-1896 Network: masonjd@y12.doe.gov http://www.y12.doe.gov/sgml/sc34/ ftp://ftp.y12.doe.gov/pub/sgml/sc34/ Mr. G. Ken Holman (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Secretariat - Standards Council of Canada) Crane Softwrights Ltd. Box 266, Kars, ON K0A-2E0 CANADA Telephone: +1 613 489-0999 Facsimile: +1 613 489-0995 Network: jtc1sc34@scc.ca http://www.jtc1sc34.org

Disposition of Comments on CD text of DSDL Part 9 (JTC1/SC34 N0801) contained in JTC1/SC34 N0819 – Summary of Voting

Source: Francis Cave, Project Editor

Comments of Japan

1. General

We believe that it is now too late to provide a DTD extension as an standard, especially because this is still a CD.

Response: Comment not accepted.

Many major document applications around the world continue to be dependent upon DTDs for a number of reasons:

• There is a large established pool of expertise in the development and maintenance of DTDs. The cost of retraining to use other schema languages would be high compared with the anticipated cost of additional training to use tools that implement DSDL Part 9.

• There is a large installed base of off-the-shelf and bespoke validation tools that rely upon DTDs for their operation. The cost of replacement of existing bespoke validation tools) would be high compared with the anticipated cost of acquiring tools that would perform the additional validation tasks enabled by implementations of DSDL Part 9.

• The cost of conversion of DTDs to other schema languages would not always be low, since the task cannot be completely automated. DTDs would in many cases need to be retained for entity management and would therefore have to be maintained in parallel with schemas in other languages. In such a situation it would be a requirement that a DTD should not treat as invalid any instance that is treated as valid by a replacement schema, and it is unlikely that this can be guaranteed without manual checks. The costs of guaranteeing this level of equivalence between DTDs and schemas is anticipated to be high in many cases.

2. Technical

What happened to the accepted Japanese comment (see N0748).

Response: The comment is reasonable. The Japanese comment in the N0748 was accepted and it had been the editor’s intention to include text in 9.2. The editor apologies that this was not included and will rectify this in the next draft.

Supply a processing model as a reference model, and make sure this is implementable on top of XML conformant processors.

Response: Comment accepted. A processing model will be added to the text.