Position Paper on Compound Documents
Submitted by Scott Hayman, Research In Motion
Limited.
April 29, 2004.
Should there be a set of predefined compound document profiles
(eg. XHTML Basic + SMIL Basic + SVG Tiny)?
- Yes, I think there
should be. If there
aren’t predefined profiles, they will be defined (either
formally or informally) by different groups and individuals as
needed. This would
almost certainly lead to interoperability issues between and
amongst user agents and authoring tools.
What happens with event processing and style cascading across
the boundaries of mixed content?
- One event model needs
to be defined such that events flow across the boundaries of mixed
content in a well-defined way.
- It seems to make
sense to me, at least at a high level, that style cascading should
also flow across the boundaries in a well defined way as
well.
What MIME type should a compound document use?
- For general compound
documents, something that captures the idea that it is a mix of XML
languages should be used (e.g., application/mixed-xml or
image/mixed-xml).
- For pre-defined
component document profiles, a profile-specific MIME type should be
defined.
What is needed from schema languages?
- Schema languages need
to be rich enough to support multi-namespace documents.
- As well, they need to
be capable of taking advantage of any of the modularization of the
constituent languages that may have already been done.
Is there a need for a generic extension architecture? What is
needed to allow extensions, such as plugins, to handle content that
is not supported directly by the browser/host environment?
- We don’t have a
need for a generic extension architecture at this time.
The work your organization has done in these areas
- RIM has investigated
ways to support various combinations of xHTML, SVG, Xforms , and
SMIL compound documents.
The goals your organization believes are most important in
these areas
- In no particular
order:
-
- Suitability for
wireless handhelds,
- Interoperability
across user agent implementations,
- Interoperability
across development tools, and
-
Functionality.
What would you like to see W3C do in these areas