Re: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy (XMLVersioning-41)

On Mon, 2005-02-14 at 10:36 -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org> was heard to say:
> | IMO, this means that one needs to consider the implications of adding a
> | name to a namespace in the same way that one needs to consider minting
> | a new media type if a backwards incompatible revision to a document
> | format is produced.
> 
> I agree that the implications have to be considered, but that doesn't
> always mean that the right answer is to change the namespace (or the
> media type).
> 
> Consider the case of XSLT 2.0.

Yes, let's do.

I think writing up a number of cases like this would be a productive
way to approach XMLVersioning-41. I'm not confident I know what
the general principles are yet.

Other... chapters of this book... that come to mind:

 -- XSLT extension functions
 -- adding <img> to HTML
 -- adding <form> to HTML
 -- adding <frames> and <script> to HTML
 -- SMIL system: extensions
 -- adding rdf:parseType="Collection"
  -- not adding rdf:parseType="Quote"
 -- adding Content-Transfer-Encoding to HTTP
 -- the emergence of TLS in HTTP (new URI scheme, new port; good
      idea or not?)
 -- CSS forward-compatible parsing rules
 -- SOAP must-understand
 -- the XPointer scheme registry


>  It uses the same namespace name (and
> would use the same media type, if XSLT 1.0 had had an official media
> type) as XSLT 1.0, despite the fact that there are new elements and
> that the semantics of some of the existing elements have changed.
> 
> The use of a version attribute means that an XSLT processor can "do
> the right thing" (though what the right thing is varies a bit)
> regardless of the fact that the vocabulary has changed.
> 
> In the case of the XML namespace, all of the defined items are
> idependent, so I don't see the problem.
> 
> If you write software (or have written software) that will do
> something weird and magical with xml:foobar that it wouldn't do with
> xyzzy:foobar, I think your software has a bug.
> 
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
> 
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Monday, 14 February 2005 17:41:26 UTC