- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:53:03 -0500
- To: www-tag@w3.org
Paul Prescod writes: >I think you're trying to invent a problem where there isn't one. Have >you ever seen two namespace declarations that differed only in case? >Have you ever seen software that produces them? Have you ever seen >software that was confused by them? This "best practice" is common >sense and writing it down is at worst (and probably at best!) a waste >of time. > >You're using a lot of rhetorically charged words like "willy nilly" >and "changing through the back door" and "opening a can of worms". But >can you please outline a realistic scenario in which there is a >problem caused by having a string-based equivalence for namespace URIs >and yet having them be dereferencable (and thus _also_ subject to >protocol equivalence constraints). I'm waiting to hear of a scenario >where a lung machine explodes or a purchase order goes awry or ... Excellent. This conversation is running ahead of schedule, and we've already reached the "demonstrate that there is a real problem" defense of URIs. This is an effective rhetorical defense because of the ethereal nature of URIs, and the readiness with which defenders of URIs advocate supposedly obvious but definitely _not specified_ "best practices". It is, of course, a conversation that we're likely to have eternally recur until and unless those practices are formally codified as specifications. As that codification will likely require acknowledgment that there is a problem, we'll probably spinning for a while, though perhaps the arguments move faster as they repeat. It took 496 messages (and nine days) to reach an exploding chemical plant on xml-uri, after all: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-uri/2000May/0496.html -- Simon St.Laurent Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets Errors, errors, all fall down! http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org
Received on Thursday, 19 December 2002 16:52:37 UTC