- From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 05:37:20 -0500 (EST)
- To: bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com
- Cc: www-rdf-comments@w3.org
From: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> Subject: Re: What does RDF consider a namespace to be? Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:19:16 +0000 > 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. > ]] True, the connection to URI references is made by RDF, not XML. > 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. Yes, my understanding of XML namespaces was flawed. I now see that they are even further from the term ``namespace'' as it is used in some places in the RDF documents. > >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'. I found 5 matches for ``namespace'' in RDF Semantics. I don't know if any of them need any changes, but they are there. 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 Hmm. For now, I suppose so, but this is in no sense a final resolution of the issue. Also, there is a general issue here, namely how should RDF use the term ``namespace'', that is unlikely to be satisfactorily addressed by independant editorial action. I believe that the RDF document editors are trying to further harmonize the use of terms in the RDF documents - perhaps a better disposition would be to expand this harmonization to include harmonization with other W3C document and put ``namespace'' on a list of terms to investigate. peter
Received on Tuesday, 25 February 2003 05:37:36 UTC