- From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@openhealth.org>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 10:14:54 -0400
- To: "Tim Bray" <tbray@textuality.com>, <www-tag@w3.org>
Tim Bray wrote: > > Actually, I don't think that the TAG needs to beat up on URNs to achieve > its goal in this particular case; we should just say that namespace > names SHOULD be URIs that may readily be dereference, and when > dereferenced, yield human and machine readable information about the > namespace. When the time comes that URNs (or any other URI scheme) are > easily dereferenced, they'll make good namespace names. Right now, > URNs do not make good namespace names. -Tim > > I am tempted to agree wholeheartedly with this however one issue bothers me. Perhaps we should acknowledge that there are two types of XML applications: 1) Web based 2) non-Web based The concept of _dereferencability_ is tightly linked to being "on the Web" ... in fact one could argue that this is the defining characteristic. One could even say that for Web based XML applications, namespace URIs MUST be dereferencable, yet the XML Namespace naming mechanism needs to work for all of XML. Perhaps the source of the controversy regarding XML Namespaces arises from those XML applications that are not intended to be Web based? In such cases I must admit it is a bit strange that dereferencable URIs are required, and in such cases URNs are not an unreasonable option (understanding that I am not personally in such applications). Jonathan
Received on Tuesday, 2 July 2002 10:20:34 UTC