xhtml-building and namespaces

This is in regards to http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-xhtml-building-19990910

I do not quite understand why when a new module is introduced 
the namespace of the whole new xhtml version has to be changed.

The semantics of W3C's xhtml do not change, so I should keep W3C 
namespace.

It would make more sense to me if only the module will have a new 
namespace. This will allow applications who are not familiar with my 
module to understand a great deal of the document.

Having the whole document using a new namespace seems to kill 
the purpose of namespaces: 
If my namespace is applied to the whole document how would a regular 
browser will know that this is regular xhtml?

That is instead of the examaple in 5.5:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//MyOrg//DTD My XHTML Extensions//EN"
          "http://www.myorg.com/DTDs/myorg.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.myorg.com/DTDs/myorg.dtd">
<head>
<title>MyOrg Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is an example document using the new elements:
<myelement>A test element <myotherelement /> </myelement>
</p>
</body>
</html>

I would have:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//MyOrg//DTD My XHTML Extensions//EN"
          "http://www.myorg.com/DTDs/myorg.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/strict"
      xmlns:myorg="http://www.myorg.com/xhtml-extentions-1">
<head>
<title>MyOrg Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is an example document using the new elements:
<myorg:myelement>A test element <myorg:myotherelement /> </myorg:myelement>
yet browsers unfamiliar with my extentions render it well.
</p>
</body>
</html>   

Regards, 
Nir.
===================================
Nir Dagan
Assistant Professor of Economics
Brown University 
Providence, RI
USA

http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
tel:+1-401-863-2145

Received on Sunday, 24 October 1999 10:19:35 UTC