- From: Paul Mitchell <paul@paul-mitchell.me.uk>
- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:45:16 +0000
- To: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
Daniel Schierbeck wrote: > That's exactly what I meant. The question is, are presentation and > behavior generic enough to be inserted into the XML namespace? I like > to think so, but if there's someone with a good argument against it I > might be change my mind. I think so too, but there are other ways to solve the problem. Generic names for special things does seem like a good solution, until ... > It's important that we figure out exactly what these elements should > contain (possibly XML?) and then choose the most appropriate names. The trouble is that there are hundreds of eqally appropriate names. Sorry to get biblical on you, but one always finds the answers to seemingly impossible problems in the bible. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/#NT-Name XML, being a UNICODE protocol, allows element names to be in any human language. For any element name to have a truly "generic" meaning, it should have transliterative synonyms in the *same namespace* for non-English users at least, and literal synonyms for all language users. More people may speak English than any other language, but more people speak all other languages than speak any one, and English isn't a single language anyway, so a universal XML naming scheme must accomodate that, otherwise it goes against the 6th "XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear", 9th "XML documents shall be easy to create" and 10th "Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance." commandments. -- Paul Mitchell www.paul-mitchell.me.uk
Received on Friday, 24 February 2006 19:46:40 UTC