Re: A modest namespace proposal, in some detail.

At 15:33 27/5/97 BST, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
>There follows a quite simple proposal for namespaces, lighter weight
>than those seen heretofore, but admittedly NOT valid SGML as things
>stand.  
...
>I recognise that this really breaks SGML.  If there's <emph>any</emph>
>chance that WG8 will grandfather this, I think it's worth it.  To me,
>going the CONCUR route just for compatibility is not worth it, I'd
>rather have no official namespace mechanism at all than that one.

Henry, I don't for a minute think this breaks SGML - it seems to me like a
brilliant extension that solves a problem that WG8 have been trying to crack
for some time. I much prefer it to my less flexible approach, but would
suggest that there might be a few things that could be done to generalize
it. Firstly there is no need to restrict %Name to a single name - why not
make it %NameGroup? (This would have an added advantage in making the name
space appear similar to that of the name space identifiers used for CONCUR:-))

Given that we have multiple names for name spaces, we can then envisage that
the outermost name space is defined as that of the containing doctype. Then
we don't need a :id variant as it becomes doctype:id if referred to from
anywhere other than main name space. Similarly with elements that are
inherited in named sections, e.g. doctype:element.

Before we complete the design there is one other feature that may not be
required for XML but which might be a useful, if somewhat heretical,
generalization for SGML. How about allowing doctypes to have a name group
instead of just a name to indicate the elements at which it is senisible to
start creating fragments from using this DTD?

As for the chance that WG8 will grandfather this proposal I for one will be
only too willing to fight for it in WG8. I think it has a great chance of
success.
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.sgml.u-net.com/

Received on Wednesday, 28 May 1997 04:05:46 UTC