Re: Enhancements for HTML 2.1

Keith M. Corbett (kmc@specialform.com)
Mon, 20 Mar 1995 10:44:13 -0400

>OK: SGML. Some thoughts. If we can get to the stage of browser makers
>distributing a half doz. assorted popular DTDs with their product, we
>can go for <!doctype foo public "foo//bar//blort"> and have the
>browser pick up the DTD and SGML Decl. from local disk, engage
>whatever parsing code is embedded, and validate the doc.
>[...]
>If foo.dtd is not on disk, the browser looks for it in the same
>directory on the same server where it got the file. If not there, then
>in one of some popular repositories. Once found, add it to local disk.

Check out the SGML Open catalog mechanism "for interpreting external
identifiers in entity declarations". [1] The simple entity catalog format
maps PUBLIC identifiers and entity names to system filenames. (The public
text for HTML includes such a catalog. [2])

The nsgmls parser takes this one step further with an SGMLDECL catalog entry
for specifying the pathname to an SGML declaration to be used if the
document instance does not contain one. [3]

-kmc

[1] http://www.sgmlopen.org/sgml/docs/general/entity.htm
SGML Open Draft Technical Resolution 9401:1994 on "Entity Management"

[2] http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/catalog

[3] ftp://ftp.jclark.com/pub/sp/man/nsgmls.1
Unformatted man page for the nsgmls parser.