Re: Fwd: error in section 2.1 'Basic Concepts' of Namespaces in XML 1.0

On 2014-09-22 07:37, Paul Grosso wrote:
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	error in section 2.1 'Basic Concepts' of Namespaces in XML 1.0
> Resent-Date: 	Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:50:27 +0000
> Resent-From: 	xml-names-editor@w3.org
> Date: 	Sun, 21 Sep 2014 18:50:01 -0600
> From: 	C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>
> To: 	xml-names-editor@w3.org
> CC: 	C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>
>
>
>
> In section 2.1 of the 'Namespaces in XML' specification, I see that
> the term 'namespace name' is defined thus:
>
>      [Definition: For a name N in a namespace identified by a URI I, the
>      namespace name is I. For a nameN that is not in a namespace, the
>      namespace name has no value. ]
>
> These two sentences between them seem to specify that in the
> XML document <e/>, the root element is not in any namespace.


Checking the first edition of NS 1.0, I see that the term
"namespace name" is not ever really defined.

What appears to be its "definition" at
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114/#dt-NSName
is quite confusing and hardly a definition.  In some context,
here is the "definition" (*'ed content is bold--and therefore
presumably the term being defined--in the spec):

  [Definition:] A namespace is *declared* using a family of
  reserved attributes. Such an attribute's name must either
  be xmlns or have xmlns: as a prefix. These attributes, like
  any other XML attributes, may be provided directly or by default.

[Definition:] The attribute's value, a URI reference, is the
  *namespace name* identifying the namespace.

No where in the 1.0 spec does it say what it means for an
(element or otherwise) name to have a namespace name.

So one could argue that, to say "the namespace name has no
value"--while it does not say that there is with certainty no
namespace membership information associated with the name--is
is tantamount to saying that there is no xmlns-type attribute's
value associated with the (element) name, which is true.

paul

>
> This is rather different from the technical intention in the original
> version of this specification, as I remember it being agreed by the
> responsible working group, which was that for names like this one,
> for which the local name is known and for which no namespace
> is known, the Namespaces specification should avoid saying that
> they were, or were not, in any namespace.  Such reticence would
> help ensure that the association of such names with a particular
> namespace might be established by means not described in the
> 'Namespaces in XML' specification.
>