Re: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy

Patrick Stickler <patrick.stickler@nokia.com> writes:

> A namespace URI identifies a (potentially infinite) set of terms
> which all share that namespace URI as a prefix.

Hear hear!  I've only (:-) read a hundred or so posts in this thread,
so it may be an exaggeration to say that this is the first mention of
infinity in it, but it's crucial in my opinion.

As usual, the Namespaces REC is being interpreted as saying much more
than it does say.  Almost all it says is how to tell if two names are
in the same namespace or not.  It does this in a purely syntactic
way.  It does it _without_ appeal to _any_ external source of
information, i.e. schema, standard, oracle, whatever.  So, per the
Namespace REC and nothing else, are

  a:lang 
  b:base

in the same namespace, qua names?  Don't know.  If those names appear
in the scope of namespace declarations

  xmlns:a="http://www.example.com/ns"
  xmlns:b="http://www.example.com/ns"

the answer is 'yes'.

So, are

 xml:lang
 xml:base
 xml:banana
 xml:id

in the same namespace?

Answer, _by definition_, yes, since the Namespace REC itself provides
a declaration for the 'xml' prefix.

It follows that _as defined in the Namespace REC_ there are infinitely
many names in every namespace.

End of story.

ht
-- 
 Henry S. Thompson, HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh
                     Half-time member of W3C Team
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Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2005 17:22:45 UTC