Re: namespace evolution [was: Issue prefix-confusion]

> Sure it is! It's one of the main motivations for namespaces.

If we can use namespaces for versioning in RDF, no one would be more
delighted than myself!

However we need to make it clear that that is what we are doing. A
parser must understand how a document is to be interpreted.

I must say that I have some misgivings though. Using namespaces may
make things very difficult for the parser.  if we have a strict
versioning, the parser can find out the version, and switch over to
that mode. On the other hand, usinf namespaces it will it cope with

<RDF
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:rdf1="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:rdf2="http://www.w3.org/2003/09/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">

Frank



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
To: "Frank Boumphrey" <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: "Aaron Swartz" <aswartz@upclink.com>; "RDFCore Working Group"
<w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 10:38 PM
Subject: namespace evolution [was: Issue prefix-confusion]


> [what does this have to do with prefix-confusion?]
>
> Frank Boumphrey wrote:
> >
> > > If we change the meaning of RDF, then we change the namespace. I
> > don't think
> > > we'll need anything more.
> >
> > If W3C history is a guide, this is not really an option.
>
> Sure it is.
>
> > It was made quite clear to us on the XHTML WG that a namespace is
a
> > namespace is a namespace!
>
> No, I think what the community said was that there's just
> one XHTML language; i.e. the XHTML namespace is the
> XHTML namespace is the XHTML namespace.
>
> > e.g. frames, strict and loose XHTML all have the same namespace.
>
> That doesn't necessarily carry over to RDF. It certainly
> doesn't carry over to XSLT, where there are at least
> two extant dialects with different namespace names (one
> from Microsoft, another from W3C) nor for XML Schema,
> where there are several dialects from W3C with
> different namespace names.
>
> > No there is XML 1.0, and the upcoming XML 1.1, and we need to do
the
> > same thing.
>
> But XML syntax isn't built using namespaces, so it can't
> use namespaces as a versioning mechanism.
>
> > versioning, although mundane _is_important.
>
> Sure it is! It's one of the main motivations for namespaces.
>
> --
> Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
>

Received on Thursday, 31 May 2001 00:20:11 UTC