Re: What Name Should A Namespace Name?

Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com> wrote:

> Having said that, I don't
> see why a data:, URL couldn't be used, due to the level of
> specificity.

Hmm, I'm not convinced that you could use a data: URI. The answers to what's
the resource at a namespace URI (a namespace) and what's the resource at
data: URI (the content of the URI) seem to be mutually exclusive. Unless, of
course, you've discovered that a namespace is a set of bits (which I doubt).

This seems to be hard for people to wrap their heads around, but a data: URI
identifies only one thing -- data. It does not identify a city, country,
person or namespace -- AFAIK, those are not data. Even if you say:

    data:text/plain,this%20represents%20Sean%20Palmer

it doesn't represent you. It represents this bit of text: "this represents
Sean Palmer" -- it's in quotes, you can almost thing of it as reified --
it's not being asserted, merely identified.

(Now the data: URI spec doesn't actually say this, but I'm going to hold
this position anyway.)
-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]