RFC2518 (WebDAV) / RFC2396 (URI) inconsistency

Hi.

(1) RFC2518 (WebDAV) is based on XML + namespaces and has chosen to use the
namespace name "DAV:" to identify it's elements. Note that "DAV:" *is* a
properly registered URI scheme (see [1])

(2) The XML namespaces recommendation says that an XML namespace is
identified by a URI reference as defined in RFC2396.

(3) RFC2396 gives the following grammar for absolute URIs:

absoluteURI   = scheme ":" ( hier_part | opaque_part )
opaque_part   = uric_no_slash *uric

"DAV:" doesn't seem to be a valid "opaque_part", because "opaque_part" MUST
start with "uric_no_slash", thus it may not be empty.

(4) I became aware of this mismatch when trying to develop a RELAG NG schema
for WebDAV. James Clark's JING validator rejects the namespace name "DAV:"
as invalid URI. So this has become a real-world problem (maybe it was "just"
academic before).

I think this means that either RFC2396 or RFC2518 need to be fixed.

Feedback appreciated.

Julian


[1] <http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes>