[docbook-apps] Bug(?) in VERSION XSL file or in resolver?

[Larry Garfield <larry at garfieldtech dot com>]

This looks like a bug to me, but I figured I'd check to see if anyone 
else has seen it before reporting it, as well as deciding where to 
report it.

I've been having a problem with catalog files, specifically, every time 
I run an XSLT process the script pauses for a long time (~30 seconds) 
and generates a lot of network traffic before continuing.  If a given 
run of Ant has two Saxon transforms, there are two separate instances of 
large network traffic.

After pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my catalog file 
wasn't mapping my DTDs properly, I cranked up the verbosity in 
CatalogManager.properties and fired up Ethereal to see precisely what 
was happening.  After a little testing, I found that the problem wasn't 
my catalog, but the VERSION file, located on my system in:

/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/VERSION

(I'm using Debian, which puts everything in slightly different places 
than the stock tarball does but, I believe, doesn't edit them.)

Specifically, the debugging information is:

     [java] Resolved URI:
     [java]     file:/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/VERSION

Note the lack of a URI being resolved.  VERSION line 8 reads:

<xsl:param name="VERSION" select="string(document('')//fm:Version[1])"/>

When the resolver gets to that line, Ethereal shows that it downloads 
the entire DocBook DTD from the Oasis web site.  That's what's 
generating all that traffic.

It appears that the resolver is getting to that line and trying to 
resolve a URI of ''.  That doesn't match any local file, nor anything in 
my catalog file, nor anything in the DocBook SGML .cat file, so the 
resolver falls back on the only other DTD file it knows about, the one 
specified in the System portion of the input file's DTD, which is the 
URL to the Oasis web site.  I also tried commenting that line out of 
VERSION, and it resulted in an error later in the script when the 
'VERSION' variable is used (naturally) but prevented the script from 
re-downloading the entire DTD.

I tried adding a <uri name="" uri="html/docbook.xsl" /> directive to my 
catalog file, as well as the same with a blank uri attribute, but in 
both cases the resolver still downloaded the whole DTD from the Oasis site.

This behavior certainly seems like a bug to me, however, I'm not certain 
which component has the bug.  It could be in the XSLT VERSION script for 
having document('') in the first place, or in the Apache resolver class 
for not handling such a URL "properly".  I don't know off hand what the 
"proper" behavior is for this scenario, but I'm pretty sure that abusing 
the poor Oasis site isn't it. :-)  I didn't see this issue mentioned in 
either project's BTS.

Is this actually a bug, or is there some detail I'm missing?  If it is, 
to which project should I report it, or both?

Software versions in use:
Java 1.5
DocBook 4.3
DocBook XSL 1.66.1

--
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry@garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an 
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it 
to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the 
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it."  -- Thomas Jefferson