The Kesselman/Connoly proposal (was Re: Re Deprecate/Undefined )

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Bray" <tbray@attglobal.net>
To: <xml-uri@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2000 1:18 AM
Subject: Re: Re Deprecate/Undefined (was Request for status dump and issues
check)


> Dan's proposal seems entirely sensible to me.  Let's do it that
> way (er, someone from the DOM please speak up and tell us that it
> works the way he laid it out) and go home.


Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing, I presume that "Dan's
proposal" is the message at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-uri/2000Jun/0854.html

The proposal actually seems to be from Joe Kesselman:

>> "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.

Joe has been advocating "namespace identity = absolute URI + locator" for
several weeks now, FWIW, and many have endorsed it.  The DOM WG discussed
this issue last week and it *does* work this way.

So, this proposal is:
 - the original intent of most of the Namespace WG (right?)
 - acceptable to those who believe that namespaces must be "real" URIs (?)
 - consistent with existing XSLT practice (if not the letter of the spec)
 - consistent with the DOM Level 2 CR

As Dan C. says, "this is the best we can do".  Let's do it!