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Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +000086<p>Table of Content:</p>
87<ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +000088<li><a href="General2">General overview</a></li>
89<li><a href="#definition">The definition</a></li>
90<li><a href="#Simple">Using catalogs</a></li>
91<li><a href="#Some">Some examples</a></li>
92<li><a href="#reference">How to tune catalog usage</a></li>
93<li><a href="#validate">How to debug catalog processing</a></li>
94<li><a href="#Declaring">How to create and maintain catalogs</a></li>
95<li><a href="#implemento">The implementor corner quick review of the
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +000096 API</a></li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +000097<li><a href="#Other">Other resources</a></li>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +000098</ol>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +000099<h3><a name="General2">General overview</a></h3>
100<p>What is a catalog? Basically it's a lookup mechanism used when an entity
101(a file or a remote resource) references another entity. The catalog lookup
102is inserted between the moment the reference is recognized by the software
103(XML parser, stylesheet processing, or even images referenced for inclusion
104in a rendering) and the time where loading that resource is actually
105started.</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000106<p>It is basically used for 3 things:</p>
107<ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000108<li>mapping from &quot;logical&quot; names, the public identifiers and a more
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000109 concrete name usable for download (and URI). For example it can associate
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000110 the logical name
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000111 <p>&quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;</p>
112<p>of the DocBook 4.1.2 XML DTD with the actual URL where it can be
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000113 downloaded</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000114<p>http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd</p>
115</li>
116<li>remapping from a given URL to another one, like an HTTP indirection
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000117 saying that
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000118 <p>&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committes/tr.xsl&quot;</p>
119<p>should really be looked at</p>
120<p>&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committes/entity/stylesheets/base/tr.xsl&quot;</p>
121</li>
122<li>providing a local cache mechanism allowing to load the entities
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000123 associated to public identifiers or remote resources, this is a really
124 important feature for any significant deployment of XML or SGML since it
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000125 allows to avoid the aleas and delays associated to fetching remote
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000126 resources.</li>
127</ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000128<h3><a name="definition">The definitions</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000129<p>Libxml, as of 2.4.3 implements 2 kind of catalogs:</p>
130<ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000131<li>the older SGML catalogs, the official spec is SGML Open Technical
132 Resolution TR9401:1997, but is better understood by reading <a href="http://www.jclark.com/sp/catalog.htm">the SP Catalog page</a> from
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000133 James Clark. This is relatively old and not the preferred mode of
134 operation of libxml.</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000135<li>
136<a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/spec.html">XML
Daniel Veillardaf43f632002-03-08 15:05:20 +0000137 Catalogs</a> is far more flexible, more recent, uses an XML syntax and
138 should scale quite better. This is the default option of libxml.</li>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000139</ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000140<p>
141<h3><a name="Simple">Using catalog</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000142<p>In a normal environment libxml will by default check the presence of a
143catalog in /etc/xml/catalog, and assuming it has been correctly populated,
144the processing is completely transparent to the document user. To take a
145concrete example, suppose you are authoring a DocBook document, this one
146starts with the following DOCTYPE definition:</p>
147<pre>&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000148&lt;!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC &quot;-//Norman Walsh//DTD DocBk XML V3.1.4//EN&quot;
149 &quot;http://nwalsh.com/docbook/xml/3.1.4/db3xml.dtd&quot;&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000150<p>When validating the document with libxml, the catalog will be
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000151automatically consulted to lookup the public identifier &quot;-//Norman Walsh//DTD
152DocBk XML V3.1.4//EN&quot; and the system identifier
153&quot;http://nwalsh.com/docbook/xml/3.1.4/db3xml.dtd&quot;, and if these entities have
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000154been installed on your system and the catalogs actually point to them, libxml
155will fetch them from the local disk.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000156<p style="font-size: 10pt">
157<strong>Note</strong>: Really don't use this
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000158DOCTYPE example it's a really old version, but is fine as an example.</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000159<p>Libxml will check the catalog each time that it is requested to load an
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000160entity, this includes DTD, external parsed entities, stylesheets, etc ... If
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000161your system is correctly configured all the authoring phase and processing
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000162should use only local files, even if your document stays portable because it
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000163uses the canonical public and system ID, referencing the remote document.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000164<h3><a name="Some">Some examples:</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000165<p>Here is a couple of fragments from XML Catalogs used in libxml early
166regression tests in <code>test/catalogs</code> :</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000167<pre>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
168&lt;!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC
169 &quot;-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN&quot;
170 &quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd&quot;&gt;
171&lt;catalog xmlns=&quot;urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog&quot;&gt;
172 &lt;public publicId=&quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
173 uri=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000174...</pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000175<p>This is the beginning of a catalog for DocBook 4.1.2, XML Catalogs are
176written in XML, there is a specific namespace for catalog elements
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000177&quot;urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog&quot;. The first entry in this
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000178catalog is a <code>public</code> mapping it allows to associate a Public
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000179Identifier with an URI.</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000180<pre>...
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000181 &lt;rewriteSystem systemIdStartString=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/&quot;
182 rewritePrefix=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook/&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000183...</pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000184<p>A <code>rewriteSystem</code> is a very powerful instruction, it says that
185any URI starting with a given prefix should be looked at another URI
186constructed by replacing the prefix with an new one. In effect this acts like
187a cache system for a full area of the Web. In practice it is extremely useful
188with a file prefix if you have installed a copy of those resources on your
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000189local system.</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000190<pre>...
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000191&lt;delegatePublic publicIdStartString=&quot;-//OASIS//DTD XML Catalog //&quot;
192 catalog=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook.xml&quot;/&gt;
193&lt;delegatePublic publicIdStartString=&quot;-//OASIS//ENTITIES DocBook XML&quot;
194 catalog=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook.xml&quot;/&gt;
195&lt;delegatePublic publicIdStartString=&quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML&quot;
196 catalog=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook.xml&quot;/&gt;
197&lt;delegateSystem systemIdStartString=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/&quot;
198 catalog=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook.xml&quot;/&gt;
199&lt;delegateURI uriStartString=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/&quot;
200 catalog=&quot;file:///usr/share/xml/docbook.xml&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000201...</pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000202<p>Delegation is the core features which allows to build a tree of catalogs,
203easier to maintain than a single catalog, based on Public Identifier, System
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000204Identifier or URI prefixes it instructs the catalog software to look up
205entries in another resource. This feature allow to build hierarchies of
206catalogs, the set of entries presented should be sufficient to redirect the
207resolution of all DocBook references to the specific catalog in
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000208<code>/usr/share/xml/docbook.xml</code> this one in turn could delegate all
209references for DocBook 4.2.1 to a specific catalog installed at the same time
210as the DocBook resources on the local machine.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000211<h3><a name="reference">How to tune catalog usage:</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000212<p>The user can change the default catalog behaviour by redirecting queries
213to its own set of catalogs, this can be done by setting the
214<code>XML_CATALOG_FILES</code> environment variable to a list of catalogs, an
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000215empty one should deactivate loading the default <code>/etc/xml/catalog</code>
216default catalog</p>
217<h3><a name="validate">How to debug catalog processing:</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000218<p>Setting up the <code>XML_DEBUG_CATALOG</code> environment variable will
219make libxml output debugging informations for each catalog operations, for
220example:</p>
221<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; xmllint --memory --noout test/ent2
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000222warning: failed to load external entity &quot;title.xml&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000223orchis:~/XML -&gt; export XML_DEBUG_CATALOG=
224orchis:~/XML -&gt; xmllint --memory --noout test/ent2
225Failed to parse catalog /etc/xml/catalog
226Failed to parse catalog /etc/xml/catalog
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000227warning: failed to load external entity &quot;title.xml&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000228Catalogs cleanup
229orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000230<p>The test/ent2 references an entity, running the parser from memory makes
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000231the base URI unavailable and the the &quot;title.xml&quot; entity cannot be loaded.
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000232Setting up the debug environment variable allows to detect that an attempt is
233made to load the <code>/etc/xml/catalog</code> but since it's not present the
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000234resolution fails.</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000235<p>But the most advanced way to debug XML catalog processing is to use the
236<strong>xmlcatalog</strong> command shipped with libxml2, it allows to load
237catalogs and make resolution queries to see what is going on. This is also
238used for the regression tests:</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000239<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog test/catalogs/docbook.xml \
240 &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000241http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd
242orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000243<p>For debugging what is going on, adding one -v flags increase the verbosity
244level to indicate the processing done (adding a second flag also indicate
245what elements are recognized at parsing):</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000246<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog -v test/catalogs/docbook.xml \
247 &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000248Parsing catalog test/catalogs/docbook.xml's content
249Found public match -//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN
250http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd
251Catalogs cleanup
252orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000253<p>A shell interface is also available to debug and process multiple queries
254(and for regression tests):</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000255<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog -shell test/catalogs/docbook.xml \
256 &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000257&gt; help
258Commands available:
259public PublicID: make a PUBLIC identifier lookup
260system SystemID: make a SYSTEM identifier lookup
261resolve PublicID SystemID: do a full resolver lookup
262add 'type' 'orig' 'replace' : add an entry
263del 'values' : remove values
264dump: print the current catalog state
265debug: increase the verbosity level
266quiet: decrease the verbosity level
267exit: quit the shell
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000268&gt; public &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000269http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd
270&gt; quit
271orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000272<p>This should be sufficient for most debugging purpose, this was actually
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000273used heavily to debug the XML Catalog implementation itself.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000274<h3>
275<a name="Declaring">How to create and maintain</a> catalogs:</h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000276<p>Basically XML Catalogs are XML files, you can either use XML tools to
277manage them or use <strong>xmlcatalog</strong> for this. The basic step is
278to create a catalog the -create option provide this facility:</p>
279<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog --create tst.xml
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000280&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
281&lt;!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC &quot;-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN&quot;
282 &quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd&quot;&gt;
283&lt;catalog xmlns=&quot;urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000284orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000285<p>By default xmlcatalog does not overwrite the original catalog and save the
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000286result on the standard output, this can be overridden using the -noout
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000287option. The <code>-add</code> command allows to add entries in the
288catalog:</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000289<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog --noout --create --add &quot;public&quot; \
290 &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot; \
291 http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd tst.xml
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000292orchis:~/XML -&gt; cat tst.xml
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000293&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
294&lt;!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC &quot;-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN&quot; \
295 &quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd&quot;&gt;
296&lt;catalog xmlns=&quot;urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog&quot;&gt;
297&lt;public publicId=&quot;-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN&quot;
298 uri=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000299&lt;/catalog&gt;
300orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000301<p>The <code>-add</code> option will always take 3 parameters even if some of
302the XML Catalog constructs (like nextCatalog) will have only a single
303argument, just pass a third empty string, it will be ignored.</p>
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000304<p>Similarly the <code>-del</code> option remove matching entries from the
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000305catalog:</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000306<pre>orchis:~/XML -&gt; ./xmlcatalog --del \
307 &quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd&quot; tst.xml
308&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
309&lt;!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC &quot;-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN&quot;
310 &quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd&quot;&gt;
311&lt;catalog xmlns=&quot;urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog&quot;/&gt;
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000312orchis:~/XML -&gt; </pre>
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000313<p>The catalog is now empty. Note that the matching of <code>-del</code> is
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000314exact and would have worked in a similar fashion with the Public ID
315string.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000316<p>This is rudimentary but should be sufficient to manage a not too complex
317catalog tree of resources.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000318<h3><a name="implemento">The implementor corner quick review of the
319API:</a></h3>
320<p>First, and like for every other module of libxml, there is an
321automatically generated <a href="html/libxml-catalog.html">API page for
322catalog support</a>.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000323<p>The header for the catalog interfaces should be included as:</p>
324<pre>#include &lt;libxml/catalog.h&gt;</pre>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000325<p>The API is voluntarily kept very simple. First it is not obvious that
326applications really need access to it since it is the default behaviour of
327libxml (Note: it is possible to completely override libxml default catalog by
328using <a href="html/libxml-parser.html">xmlSetExternalEntityLoader</a> to
329plug an application specific resolver).</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000330<p>Basically libxml support 2 catalog lists:</p>
331<ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000332<li>the default one, global shared by all the application</li>
333<li>a per-document catalog, this one is built if the document uses the
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000334 <code>oasis-xml-catalog</code> PIs to specify its own catalog list, it is
335 associated to the parser context and destroyed when the parsing context
336 is destroyed.</li>
337</ul>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000338<p>the document one will be used first if it exists.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000339<h4>Initialization routines:</h4>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000340<p>xmlInitializeCatalog(), xmlLoadCatalog() and xmlLoadCatalogs() should be
341used at startup to initialize the catalog, if the catalog should be
342initialized with specific values xmlLoadCatalog() or xmlLoadCatalogs()
343should be called before xmlInitializeCatalog() which would otherwise do a
344default initialization first.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000345<p>The xmlCatalogAddLocal() call is used by the parser to grow the document
346own catalog list if needed.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000347<h4>Preferences setup:</h4>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000348<p>The XML Catalog spec requires the possibility to select default
349preferences between public and system delegation,
350xmlCatalogSetDefaultPrefer() allows this, xmlCatalogSetDefaults() and
351xmlCatalogGetDefaults() allow to control if XML Catalogs resolution should
352be forbidden, allowed for global catalog, for document catalog or both, the
353default is to allow both.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000354<p>And of course xmlCatalogSetDebug() allows to generate debug messages
355(through the xmlGenericError() mechanism).</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000356<h4>Querying routines:</h4>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000357<p>xmlCatalogResolve(), xmlCatalogResolveSystem(), xmlCatalogResolvePublic()
358and xmlCatalogResolveURI() are relatively explicit if you read the XML
359Catalog specification they correspond to section 7 algorithms, they should
360also work if you have loaded an SGML catalog with a simplified semantic.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000361<p>xmlCatalogLocalResolve() and xmlCatalogLocalResolveURI() are the same but
362operate on the document catalog list</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000363<h4>Cleanup and Miscellaneous:</h4>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000364<p>xmlCatalogCleanup() free-up the global catalog, xmlCatalogFreeLocal() is
365the per-document equivalent.</p>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000366<p>xmlCatalogAdd() and xmlCatalogRemove() are used to dynamically modify the
367first catalog in the global list, and xmlCatalogDump() allows to dump a
368catalog state, those routines are primarily designed for xmlcatalog, I'm not
369sure that exposing more complex interfaces (like navigation ones) would be
370really useful.</p>
Daniel Veillard9f7b84b2001-08-23 15:31:19 +0000371<p>The xmlParseCatalogFile() is a function used to load XML Catalog files,
372it's similar as xmlParseFile() except it bypass all catalog lookups, it's
373provided because this functionality may be useful for client tools.</p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000374<h4>threaded environments:</h4>
Daniel Veillardffb120d2001-08-23 00:52:23 +0000375<p>Since the catalog tree is built progressively, some care has been taken to
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000376try to avoid troubles in multithreaded environments. The code is now thread
377safe assuming that the libxml library has been compiled with threads
378support.</p>
379<p>
380<h3><a name="Other">Other resources</a></h3>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000381<p>The XML Catalog specification is relatively recent so there isn't much
MDT 2001 John Fleck04685002001-09-03 16:11:47 +0000382literature to point at:</p>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000383<ul>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000384<li>You can find an good rant from Norm Walsh about <a href="http://www.arbortext.com/Think_Tank/XML_Resources/Issue_Three/issue_three.html">the
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000385 need for catalogs</a>, it provides a lot of context informations even if
386 I don't agree with everything presented.</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000387<li>An <a href="http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/XML/XCatalog.html">old XML
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000388 catalog proposal</a> from John Cowan</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000389<li>The <a href="http://www.rddl.org/">Resource Directory Description
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000390 Language</a> (RDDL) another catalog system but more oriented toward
391 providing metadata for XML namespaces.</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000392<li>the page from the OASIS Technical <a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/">Committee on Entity
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000393 Resolution</a> who maintains XML Catalog, you will find pointers to the
394 specification update, some background and pointers to others tools
395 providing XML Catalog support</li>
Daniel Veillard35e937a2002-01-19 22:21:54 +0000396<li>Here is a <a href="buildDocBookCatalog">shell script</a> to generate
397 XML Catalogs for DocBook 4.1.2 . If it can write to the /etc/xml/
398 directory, it will set-up /etc/xml/catalog and /etc/xml/docbook based on
399 the resources found on the system. Otherwise it will just create
400 ~/xmlcatalog and ~/dbkxmlcatalog and doing:
Daniel Veillardc575b992002-02-08 13:28:40 +0000401 <p><code>export XMLCATALOG=$HOME/xmlcatalog</code></p>
Daniel Veillard35e937a2002-01-19 22:21:54 +0000402<p>should allow to process DocBook documentations without requiring
403 network accesses for the DTd or stylesheets</p>
404</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000405<li>I have uploaded <a href="ftp://xmlsoft.org/test/dbk412catalog.tar.gz">a
Daniel Veillard35e937a2002-01-19 22:21:54 +0000406 small tarball</a> containing XML Catalogs for DocBook 4.1.2 which seems
407 to work fine for me too</li>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000408<li>The <a href="http://www.xmlsoft.org/xmlcatalog_man.html">xmlcatalog
409 manual page</a>
410</li>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000411</ul>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000412<p>If you have suggestions for corrections or additions, simply contact
413me:</p>
Daniel Veillard3f4c40f2002-02-13 09:19:28 +0000414<p><a href="bugs.html">Daniel Veillard</a></p>
Daniel Veillardb8cfbd12001-10-25 10:53:28 +0000415</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td>
416</tr></table></td></tr></table>
Daniel Veillarde7ead2d2001-08-22 23:44:09 +0000417</body>
418</html>