Re: [xhtml2] Namespaces

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> As I see it:
> 1) Two vocabularies can, in theory, use the same local name. If these 
> vocabularies are ever
>    combined, there will be a collision.
>    => Let's introduce namespaces.
> 2) The syntax for declaring namespaces is crufty and verbose and people 
> don't tend to grok
>    the syntactic abstraction of binding some insignificant prefixes 
> locally to the
>    significant URIs.
>    => Let's introduce namespace inheritance which totally negates the 
> usefulness of having
>       namespaces in the first place, because now they can collide after 
> all.
> 3) A vocabulary is overhauled, so lots of thing change (but a lot of 
> things don't).
>    => Let's introduce another namespace, which is like running Rot13 on 
> all element names,
>       so all app that have not been b0rked and have implemented 
> namespaces correctly will
>       have to change wherever element identity is compared.
> 4) Gratuitously changing the identity of all elements even if their 
> semantics
>    don't change is totally impractical.
>    => Let's backport the useful stuff from the Rot13 (XHTML 2) namespace 
> to the XHTML 1
>       namespace and boycott the new Rot13 namespace.

Well said!

Although I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea of starting anew in 
XHTML 2.0, introducing new namespaces for even minor upgrades of a spec 
(e.g. xforms 1.1) is rediculous, and inheriting a namespace into another 
namespace is basically against everything that namespaces were invented 
for in the first place.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!

Received on Sunday, 22 May 2005 21:48:30 UTC