Re: Namespace names: a modification of a semi-serious proposal

At 08:04 PM 5/27/00 -0400, Clark C. Evans wrote:
>You snipped out 1/2 of the proposal, specifically 
>the use of "data:" URI for those of us who just 
>believe that a namespace URI should be used for
>"identification" and not for "locating".

The problem is that not everyone has control over the usage within
documents they read.  Writing to that rule is easy, but you can't expect
everything you read to conform.

>> Caching resources, which could conceivably be enormous
>
>Use a 256 bit hash value; almost always gaurenteed to 
>be unique and taking very little storage.

Retrieving resources to calculate those hash could still be a barrier.

>> and which might very well not exist?  
>
>If it does not exist; then, throw a warning error
>and fall back to a byte-by-byte comparison of the URI.

It'd be a lot easier to just stick with the byte-by-byte.

>> Explaining that to the folks trying to process XML 
>> within PDAs and even smaller devices (which were an 
>> explicit goal of XML 1.0) sounds like a task
>> for the extremely brave.
>
>Let them use "data:" ... nothing is forcing 
>them to use "http:" for their namespace names.

Except for the practices of everyone else with more bandwidth than
kindness.  This is about reading, not just writing.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

Received on Saturday, 27 May 2000 23:32:26 UTC