In this
essay Tim Bray presents a case for a general
solution to related-resource discovery for XML.
Such a solution would enable consistent schemes of
access to schemas, stylesheets or metadata.
The need for such a solution has been brought
to the fore recently in discussions over
namespaces and XHTML, in which one of the key
questions being asked was "Does a namespace URI
determine a schema for that namespace?". The
answer, according to the intentions of the XML
Working Group,
is "No", but the fact remains that it is very
desirable to be able to discover the schemas
associated with a document.
Tim Bray's essay, intended to present this
issue to the XML Plenary group (the set of all
members of all W3C working groups on XML) this
week, extends the question beyond just schemas, to
call for a generalized solution for all related
resources.
Update: see this
story for comments from Tim Berners-Lee, the
director of the W3C, on the namespace-URI
correspondence issue. (28 Sep 1999)