Re: Namespace dispatching

On 2002-02-21 4:39, "ext Paul Prescod" <paul@prescod.net> wrote:

> Patrick Stickler wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> Such as XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, and Frameset document
>> types, all of which have the same namespace and nearly identical
>> vocabulary but not identical content models.
> 
> Are there three XHTML "vocabularies" or just three DTDs? We could just
> think of them as ONE language with ONE processing model that happens to
> have three different DTDs depending on how picky you (either author or
> recipient) want to be.

But I want to be able to refer specifically to the XHTML Frameset
vocabulary. How do I do that? The namespace doesn't correspond to
that vocabulary.

It is true that, for any namespace, one can infer a vocabulary
consisting of all terms grounded in that namespace -- but it is
not necessarily so that such a vocabulary has functional purpose
or that there might not be other distinct vocabularies that are
subsets of that implicit vocabulary that we may need to talk
about.

Eh?

>> ...
>> to which one might have a choice of resolving to DTD, XML Schema,
>> RELAX NG, etc. all of which define the document model in question.
> 
> I think that the three different DTDs are like the difference between an
> XML Schema and a RELAX NG. They may check different things in slightly
> different ways but the *processing model* is the same and that's what's
> most important.

I honestly don't see how you can consider the processing of
different content models the same.

I may have some application that supports XHTML Strict but not
XHTML Frameset, and I sure as heck want to be able to say so in
some meaningful and consistent manner. The XHTML namespace doesn't
provide that.

If the fuzzy, broad, indistinct resolution provided by namespaces
does the job for you, fine, but don't tell me that I have to
live with that level of precision, that I must use that namespace
to refer to specific vocabularies, document models, etc. related
to that namespace.

Again, namespaces are convenient points of reference, but they do
not correlate to single vocabularies or single document models
as an inherent architectural feature. That's my point.

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 21 February 2002 05:52:55 UTC