Re: What does RDF consider a namespace to be?

At 10:03 30/01/2003 -0500, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:


>What does RDF consider a namespace to be?
>
>It appears to me that the XML namespaces document makes XML namespace
>simply be the set of URI references that share a common prefix.

Really?  I just checked, and I found nothing like that in the XML 
namespaces doc

   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#sec-intro

I did find:

[[
[Definition:] An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a 
URI reference [RFC2396], which are used in XML documents as element types 
and attribute names.
]]

I found nothing that said that the names in an XML namespace were URI 
references and a specific statement that an XML namespace is not a set:

[[
XML namespaces differ from the "namespaces" conventionally used in 
computing disciplines in that the XML version has internal structure and is 
not, mathematically speaking, a set.
]]

>   Therefore
>all XML namespaces contain an infinite and unchanging set of URI
>references.

Your premise being false, this conclusion is not justified.  I found 
nothing in xml namespaces doc that said an xml namespace could not be finite.


>However, Concepts says that ''Some terms in these namespaces have been
>deprecated, some have been added, ...''  which appears to indicate that the
>names in the namespace can be changed.  Does RDF actually use a different
>meaning of a namespace than is used in XML?

Checking through the specs, and in the light of other responses to your 
comment, I found some cases where the term 'namespace' is used where it 
might be omitted or the term 'vocabulary' might be better.

I am recording this an issue against primer, concepts, syntax and schema (a 
search of test cases and semantics for 'namespace' found no matches) to 
review the use of the term 'namespace'.  These are recorded as:

   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20030123-issues/#pfps-17
   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20030123-issues/#pfps-18
   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20030123-issues/#pfps-19
   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20030123-issues/#pfps-20

The WG will respond in due course.

Is that satisfactory for now?

Brian

Received on Monday, 24 February 2003 12:18:08 UTC