You are correct and right to be concerned.  The plan is to migrate to 
using modules that are stable even as the underlying specs evolve.  For 
now, in particular in the context of the validator, I think it would be 
correct to use the flattened version of the DTD to avoid this (short) 
instability.

olivier Thereaux wrote:
> Hi Shane, thank you very much for your answer,
>
> On Oct 16, 2006, at 22:35 , Shane McCarron wrote:
>> XHTML Modularization is undergoing an update right now.  The DTD 
>> modules in TR/xhtml-modularization are related to this new revision, 
>> which does indeed contain these corrections.  However, this is not 
>> yet a recommendation.  Once it is, XHTML 1.1 will be updated to 
>> reflect the changes.
>
> I'm a little worried by the situation in which we are going to be 
> between now and the time when XHTML 1.1 is updated to reflect these 
> changes.
>
> In particular, the following things bother me, but hopefully it is 
> just that I am misunderstanding some aspects.
>
> * In effect, there is a growing discrepancy between the (fixed) flat 
> definition of XHTML 1.1, and its modular version.
>
> * XHTML 1.1 makes a normative reference to [XHTMLMOD], XHTML mod being 
> the REC of XHTML modularization, the one dated 10 April 2001. yet 
> XHTML 1.1's document type definition refers to DTDs in 
> TR/xhtml-modularization/ and not 
> /TR/2001/REC-xhtml-modularization-20010410
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/references.html#a_normrefs 
>
> So as a result we have three definitions of XHTML 1.1
>
> * the spec prose, making a normative reference to the 20010410 xhtml 
> modularization REC
> * the flattened DTD, which is not normative (?)
> * the modular DTD, which is now a moving target and different from 
> what the spec prose defines
>
> Is this a correct interpretation of the situation? I am a little 
> worried that it looks a lot like the situation we had when HTML 4.01 
> replaced HTML4, and (IIRC) the DTD System identifiers pointing to 
> /TR/html4 made a number of documents suddenly invalid.
>
> Maybe, at least, the next version of XHTML 1.1 should refer to the 
> DTDs in dated space, so as to avoid such a situation...
>
> --olivier

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com