Re: XML 1.0 in flux

"Simon St.Laurent" wrote:

> At 10:27 AM 6/2/00 -0700, Sam Hunting wrote:
> >A similar process seems to have been contemplated by the editors of the
> >published (not secret) Recommendation (not Note) for XML 1.0:
> >
> ><extract>
> >Note: The colon character within XML names is reserved for
> >experimentation with name spaces. Its meaning is expected to be
> >standardized at some future point, at which point those documents using
> >the colon for experimental purposes may need to be updated. (There is
> >no guarantee that any name-space mechanism adopted for XML will in fact
> >use the colon as a name-space delimiter.) In practice, this means that
> >authors should not use the colon in XML names except as part of
> >name-space experiments, but that XML processors should accept the colon
> >as a name character
> ></extract>
> >
> >This portion of the XML 1.0 specification has not been subject to any
> >errata or editorial change -- but it has presumably been overridden by
> >some a priori axiom?
>
> If I remember right, someone (John Cowan?) suggested that this language
> would be removed in XML 2nd Edition, currently under development, and
> replaced with a pointer to Namespaces in XML.

Personally, I'd like to see namespaces rolled into the XML spec itself
rather than existing in a separate document.  Among other things, that
would enable us to avoid the confusing definition of a Qname, which may or
may not have a qualifier (a different example of something that quacks like
a duck but isn't a duck).  We could then just use "name", with perhaps a
"historical note" explaining the previous use of the term Qname for those
who hadn't heard the news.

Paul Abrahams

Received on Friday, 2 June 2000 22:53:52 UTC