Re: ISSUE-41/ACTION-97 decentralized-extensibility

Jonas Sicking wrote:
> ...
> 3. The fact that the effective name is a tuple consisting of
> localName+namespaceURI, rather than a simple string is generally a
> pain. Implementations have to lug around at least two arguments
> instead of one though function calls, stored members, hash keys etc.
> Many times 3. Users of APIs have to specify two parameters in function
> calls, and remember their order, store two strings instead of one
> whenever they want to store element name, etc.
> ...

Again, this is simply incorrect. There are many ways to treat the tuple 
as a single argument, for instance using the Clark notation 
("{namespaceUri}localName"), or using an object that contains both (such 
as QName in JAXP). That DOM doesn't provide that kind of API is a defect 
of the DOM, not a problem of namespaces per se -- how about fixing it?

> ...
> As mentioned before, momentum seems to be moving away from XML
> Namespaces rather than towards them (examples fixed based on received
> comments):
> ...

I do not believe the momentum has changed over the last years. People 
occasionally complain, plan for something simpler, and then nothing 
happens because it would be a pain to introduce.

 > ...
> The most recent example of 2 above was the discussion on RDFa+HTML
> where it was clear that even the experts that developed RDFa thought
> of nodes as receiving their meaning from their nodeName rather than
> from their localName+namespaceURI. One example is
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0923.html
> ...

Again; that was somebody not being aware of DOM L2/L3 functions; you are 
implying that Shane doesn't understand the relevance of namespaceURI + 
localName, which is clearly incorrect.

Please find better examples.

> Additionally, the SVG working group is hard at work trying to get away
> from exposing their users (SVG authors) to the SVG namespace. I'm
> assuming that this is based on feedback from authors disliking the SVG
> namespace.

Pointer?

> The RDF and RDFa specs has moved away from the namespacing mechanism
> that XML Namespaces is using. RDFa is based on CURIEs, which is a
> compacted single string, rather than the string-tuple that XML
> Namespaces force upon users.

Again -- please do not complain about your emails getting ignored when 
you do ignore the feedback you're getting.

It was already pointed out that RDF never used namespaces, so it, by 
definition, can't "move away" from them.

RDFa is a serialization of RDFa in HTML attributes, and it *does* use a 
prefix notation, where (in XHTML) the prefix is defined using XML 
namespaces. It always did that, so it's also not "moving away" from XML 
namespaces.

> Similarly the DOM Level 3 Events spec recently decided to drop the use
> of name+namespace tuple inspired by XML Namespaces, and instead chose
> to use a single string to identify Events.

This might be a self-fulfilling prophecy; it's not surprising because 
the people involved in writing this spec did not like namespaces in the 
first place.

> So all in all it feels like momentum is moving away from the XML
> Namespaces model, rather than towards it.
> ...

Disagreed.

For instance, a counter-example is the relatively new Java Content 
Repository specification (JSR-170/283), which uses an XML-namespace-like 
mechanism for naming of content nodes, node types, and property types.

Another, older one, is WebDAV, which uses XML-namespace-based 
extensibility all over the place (property names, condition codes, 
resource types, report names). It's the base for CalDAV, introduced just 
2..3 years ago, which is supported, for instance, by Apple and Google.

BR, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 06:28:29 UTC