Re: Namespace names and URIs

At 03:10 PM 5/16/00 -0400, John Cowan wrote:

>> If we decree, now, that namespace names really are URLs, then I argue that
>> the simple design goal of dispatching software to markup 
>
>I suppose you mean "dispatching markup to software"?

Yep.

>Dereferencing is a red herring.

I spent 24 hours thinking about that, and I just don't believe it.  If
a namespace name is really a URI, then the namespace defined by 

  http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
  http://w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
  http://18.29.1.22/XML/1998/namespace

really ought to be the same vocabulary.  Those are the same resources.
We've had trouble explaining that namespace names are syntactically URIs 
but aren't guaranteed to point to anything.  If we shift gears and say that
"yes they *are* URIs", then the task of explaining how different URIs
for the same resource can be different namespace names seems just as 
nasty.  

Stated more simply, the important thing about a URI is what it points to.

  -Tim