RE: RFC2518 (WebDAV) / RFC2396 (URI) inconsistency

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Roy T. Fielding
> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 2:51 AM
> To: Matt Timmermans
> Cc: 'Julian Reschke'; w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject: Re: RFC2518 (WebDAV) / RFC2396 (URI) inconsistency
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 07:17:46PM -0500, Matt Timmermans wrote:
> > Wow, that's annoying!
> >
> > It seems to me that fixing RFC2396 to allow an empty
> opaque_part would be
> > best, unless someone can recall any rationale for disallowing it in the
> > first place.  It looks quite arbitrary.
>
> More arbitrary than defining a new URI scheme *and* using xmlns just to
> replace DAV: with D:?  Just choose one, please.  Why on earth would we

With all due respect, I think this shows a misunderstanding of the role of
XML namespaces in WebDAV. There are a lot of reasons for WebDAV to use XML
namespaces - it's not just a syntactic matter whether to write
DAV:multistatus or D:multistatus.

First of all, without namespace declaration, an element named
DAV:multistatus wouldn't be NS-wellformed. In addition,

- WebDAV messages can be extended with "arbitrary" new extension elements,
preferrably from other namespaces (just like other XML applications do),
- WebDAV has a resource property model where a property is identified by the
pair (namespace, element name).

So, having XML namespaces in WebDAV has really nothing to do with the syntax
for the prefix.

Of course I do agree that choosing "DAV:" as namespace name was a bad idea.

> want to change the definition of URI in 2396 to allow
>
>    scheme:
>
> to be a valid URI?  It isn't a valid URI.

(Side remark: good old Microsoft is even using namespace names like "xml:").

Not according to the current grammar, right.

However, if you look at [1] you'll find that although TBL made his comments
about the DAV: URI scheme himself, he didn't catch the greater problem if
not being a URI at all. I think this says something about the *intent* of
RFC2396 :-)

> As you said, RFC 2518 was based on an early draft of XML namespaces, and
> it will need to be updated for that in any case (or stop using xmlns).

Again, this is on the list of known and resolved issues.

[1] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2001JanMar/0166.html>

Received on Tuesday, 20 November 2001 03:35:37 UTC