Re Deprecate/Undefined (was Request for status dump and issues check)

(PLEASE NOTE that this is a post to the public discussion, though I'm
copying it to a few other folks for consideration.)

Before we jump on the Deprecate/Undefined bandwagon, I'd strongly encourage
everyone to do a anity check of what its implications would be for other
specs... both immediately and with an eye toward possible reconsideration
of absolutize in the XML 2.0 timeframe. We need both to say that the
behavior of relative namespace references is currently undefined _and_ to
make sure that if/when a definitition arrives the impact on the spec and
its users will be acceptable.


I need to look at it again, but I think the DOM could get away with saying
something like:

"A Node's namespaceURI attribute is treated as a string, which yields the
right results for the absolute URI+locator values which have been declared
the Real Identity of a namespace. Since the handling of relative syntax is
currently undefined, individual implementations can decide whether to
accept it, reject it, or warn about it.  However, if absolutize is
introduced later,  that additional processing should happen at the
parser/application layer, since that's where the decision is made about
what the identity of this node's namespace should be. We might want to
provide some convenience functions at that time, but our basic model of
operating in terms of the Namespace Identity shouldn't have to change."

(If that's correct, the DOM Level 2 CR would not have to be changed
significantly to support this proposal; we'd just want to include some
version of the above paragraph in our discussion of how we handle
namespaces.)
______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research

Received on Thursday, 8 June 2000 11:40:01 UTC