consistency between namspaces 1.1 and URI spec (RFC2396-bis)

Bray and Berners-Lee seemed to say, today, that you couldn't
write software that conforms to both the namespaces
spec and RFC2396bis.

I don't see why not.

I can see two coherent positions on IRIEverywhere
and URIEquivalence: identifiers in Web Architecture
are strings over either a <96 character alphabet
or over a >10000 character alphabet.

The examples in section 2.3 Comparing IRI References
of the 18Dec namespaces CR
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-xml-names11-20021218/#IRIComparison
are very useful for explaining both the coherent
positions.

There are 4 lists of examples. The first is:

  * http://www.example.org/wine
  * http://www.Example.org/wine
  * http://www.example.org/Wine

In both the <96 and the >1000 positions, there
are three distinct identifiers in that list.

On that much we are all agreed, yes?

The next list of examples in the namespaces 1.1 CR is:

  * http://www.example.org/rosé
  * http://www.example.org/ros%c3%a9
  * http://www.example.org/ros%c3%A9
  * http://www.example.org/ros%C3%a9
  * http://www.example.org/ros%C3%A9

In the <96 view, the first item in that list isn't
an identifier (though it can be used as short-hand
notation in some formats for the last identifier in
the list) but the other 4 items are distinct
identifiers. In the >1000 view, that's a list
of 5 distinct identifiers.

The next list of examples is:

  * http://www.example.org/~wilbur
  * http://www.example.org/%7ewilbur
  * http://www.example.org/%7Ewilbur

and in either view, that's a list of 3 distinct
identifiers.

So an implementation that compares identifiers
charcter-by-character seems necessary and
sufficient in either view; in the <96 view,
you have to %xx-lify XML attribute values
before you treat them as identifiers
and in the >1000 view you don't. But in either
case, this software is consistent with
the URI spec, no?

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2003 00:25:39 UTC