Re: XHTML Comments/XHTML: One or Three Namespaces?

This didn't appear in the list archives for some reason,
so I'm forwarding to see if that helps.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: XHTML Comments/XHTML: One or Three Namespaces?
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 10:51:40 -0700
From: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
Organization: Yoyodyne Systems Labs
To: Steven Pemberton <Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl>
CC: Ted Wugofski <Ted.Wugofski@OTMP.com>,"'w3c-html-wg@w3.org'"
<w3c-html-wg@w3.org>, www-html@w3.org
References: <c=US%a=_%p=OTMP%l=MOON1-990915155037Z-83@moon1.otmp.com>
<14303.51423.881809.774567@schoener.cwi.nl>

Steven Pemberton wrote:
> 
> Ted Wugofski writes:
> 
>  > 2. Within the motivation section of the namespaces rec, the term
>  > "vocabulary" is used.  Unfortunately, the term "vocabulary" is not
>  > formally defined and within the English language has several meanings
>  > (hint hint).

> This is a very good observation that I also noticed when reading the
> message Frank forwarded from David Brownell:
> 
> >   FIRST, since there's only one HTML vocabulary, it should have only
> >   one namespace.
> 
> How do you decide if XHTML has one vocabulary? I can see arguments
> either way, and if it isn't defined, you are allowed to interpret.

Within reason, yes.  English has one vocabulary; the OED and Webster's
present different parts of it.  Specialty vocabularies are in use,
but everyone avoids having one word mean two different things when
those specialties are intimately related.


> "The element type <font> isn't in the strict vocabulary, so strict
> should have a different namespace." would seem to be a resonable
> statement.

That's a bit ambiguous.  Putting "<font>" and "<p>" in different
namespaces is a defensible model from the XML perspective, but not
from the HTML point of view.  While

    <p>An <em>emphatic</em> objection.</p>

can be valid (HTML/XHTML) regardless of namespace issues, using XML
namespaces to split the XHTML vocabulary into its natural fragments

    <p>A <deprecated:font size="+4">big</deprecated:font> lie.</p>

would break the requisite HTML compatibility.

- Dave

Received on Thursday, 16 September 1999 03:28:10 UTC