RE: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy

Hi Elliotte,

In the interest of prior brevity, I've left this part
of the conversation out of the tag thread till now.

You are confusing the bag with the stuff in the bag
(no negative connotation intended).

Consider two containers A and B:

1) A.add("lang")
2) A.add("space")
3) B = copy of A
4) B.equals(A) returns true
5) B.add("base")
6) B.add("id")
7) B.equals(A) returns false

B is the same container in line 4 as it is in line 7, but
B no longer contains the same collection in line 7 that it
did in line 4.

Containers change content over time.  The collection
is the content of the container.

Cheers,
John



-----Original Message-----
From: Elliotte Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:36 AM
To: John Boyer
Cc: paul.downey@bt.com; www-tag@w3.org; derhoermi@gmx.net
Subject: Re: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy


John Boyer wrote:


> On the other hand the namespaces rec does define a namespace
> as a collection of names plus a uri.  So whether or not the
> uri changes when the list of names changes, the namespace is
> changed when the list of names changes.
> 

Something has been bothering me about this assertion throughout the 
threads. Why do you assume that collections are time invariant? In 
general, they're not. For instance, the collection of all living people 
on planet Earth or all episodes of "As the World Turns" changes on a 
pretty regular basis.

Does adding a new item to a collection necessarily mean the collection 
is now a different collection? And even if it is true in some 
mathematical formalisms that collections are made up of a fixed and 
unchanging set of members, is that the definition of collection used or 
implied by Namespaces in XML?

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2005 18:06:10 UTC