Re: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy

/ Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> was heard to say:
| While I agree that Henry is technically correct (technically as in
| "read the specification"), this giant perma-thread clearly shows
| that there are simply problems in keeping track of versioning with
| namespaces. If a namespace can have an infinity of names, then
| perhaps this should be repaired in a new spec, since having an
| infinity of names makes versioning difficult. Either one has a
| separate URI for each version, or a representation is returned by
| the URI that contains the versioning information.

In the general case, I simply do not believe that there is any
relationship between the namespace name and the set of terms in the
namespace.

Consider the case of DocBook. DocBook V5.0 will be in a namespace. I
do not expect that namespace to change. Ever. It will be the namespace
for V5.0, V5.1, V6.0, ... V17.3, etc. ad nauseum, of DocBook.

If the document you have in hand validates against the DocBook V5.3
schema, it is a DocBook V5.3 document. If it validates (instead of, or
also) against the V5.0 schema, it is a DocBook V5.0 document. Turning
that around, as a consequence of the versioning policy of the DocBook
Technical Committee, I can predict that every V5.0 document will also
be V5.3 document.

This is not the only possible namespace/versioning strategy, but for a
bunch of practical reasons, it is the best policy for DocBook and I'd
resist any attempt to define a general policy for namespace/versioning
that prevented the DocBook policy.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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