Re: Contradictory definitions of ``qualified name''

At 12:32 PM 8/4/99 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
>I am troubled by the use of the term ``qualified name'' in the W3C
>Namespace specification.  In the second-to-last paragraph of Sec. 1, it
>says:
>
>"Names from XML namespaces may appear as qualified names, which contain
>a single colon, separating the name into a namespace prefix and a local
>part."
>
>Since the ``which'' clause is nonrestrictive, the sentence implies that
>a qualified name must contain exactly one colon.  But the syntactic
>definitions in Sec. 3 state that a qualified name consists of an
>optional prefix followed by a local part, thus implying that a qualified
>name must contain at most one colon.   There's a contradiction here.

Yep, the wording could be better.  However the intent is clear; people
have certainly complained about the namespace spec, but nobody has ever
had a problem with the fact that some names have prefixes, others don't.
The sentence in section 1 needs to be fuzzified a bit.

>Another loose end that needs to be tied up is the statement in the XML
>spec (the note in Sec. 2.3) that the colon within XML names is reserved
>for experimentation with name spaces (not namespaces!!).  Given the
>content of the Namespace spec, there seems to be no reason even to imply

Yes, well we can't retroactively change XML 1.0 except to fix editorial
errors - which that note isn't.  In fact, from a pure XML 1.0 point of view,
the element type <a:b:c:d /> is perfectly legal, and we can't change
that. -Tim

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 1999 13:10:40 UTC