Re:

On Sun, Jun 11, 2000 at 11:12:58PM -0400, keshlam@us.ibm.com wrote:
> > On the contrary, you can indeed acertain that
> >two URIs given identify the same resource.
> >What you cannot do is acertain that they don't.
> 
> Was there a clear defense of the assertion that this weak inequality was a
> reasonable characteristic for namespace identities, and thus that using
> URIs for this purpose really made sense in the first place?

Actually this assertion is incorrect for URIs. The web made the
unstated assumption that given only two allowed states (equal and unequal)
and only one test that if the test failed you were required to fall
into the unequal state.

IMNSHO, that assertion is still muddling the definitions of 'sameness'
with real world concepts as opposed to the web defined concepts...

> I think there _is_ an expectation that we can clearly distinguish namespace
> inequality as well as equality. Consider XSLT processing; elements
> belonging to XSLT's namespace are commands, those which don't are
> considered literal content. It feels rather strange to be considering
> recasting this as "those we are/aren't sure of".

Correct. If two URIs identify two Resources and those URIs are syntactically 
equal then you consider the Resource to be the identical. If the URIs are
not then you consider the Resources to be 100% not identical.

-MM

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