Re: Namespace names: a semi-serious proposal

> I really like Paul Abraham's suggestion of deprechating all URI
> schemes with the exception of "uuid" or something similar.  
> However, I like Eric's suggested replacement better.
> 
> 
>   <stylesheet xmlns="pkg:org.w3.1999.XSL.Transform" />

I hope we're all agreed that it would be unthinkable to change the
namespace name for XSLT, and that the above is just intended as a
generic example, even though my original example was the XSLT
namespace name.

Probably I'd have agreed that this was better than using URI as
namespace names (perhaps without the pkg:) if you'd suggested it two
years ago (and if I'd been involved in the discussion at that time)
but Java package name convention was one of the things explictly
considered and rejected by the WG producing the namespace REC
(according to discussion of the REC by the WG members on xml-dev after
it came out) Unless there is overwhelming need to break everything
built on top of XML namespaces since the REC came out then I don't see
any advantage in doing so after all this time.

Also I would be very surprised if this proposal would make the people
who are unhappy with the current namespace rec any happier.

You propose to change namespace names so that instead of it not being a
goal that the namespace name is directly used for retrieval, instead
it is impossible to use the name for retrieval.

This apart from it being much too late to change the namespace rec, is
fine for anyone using a namespace aware system (xpointer, xslt, sax2, ...)
as these tools never try to use the namespace name to locate a
resource anyway.

But I don't see how it is going to please the people who are unhappy
that they can't currently use the namespace name to directly locate
information about the namespace. I don't think it is possible to
really please those people as most namespace names are totally
unsuitable for such use, but if it inconveniences the people who are
currently happy with the namespace rec and makes impossible the one
thing that people who are unhappy with the namespace rec want to do,
who _does_ benefit from the change?


David

Received on Saturday, 27 May 2000 16:35:29 UTC