Re: Significant W3C Confusion over Namespace Meaning and Policy

Patrick Stickler wrote:

> 
> 
> Exactly!
> 
> And if some application encountered a term grounded in
> the Docbook namespace (sans any indication of a particular
> version of the Docbook document model) and tried to
> find out how to interpret that term by dereferencing
> the namespace name URI, (presumably) getting a namespace
> document, that namespace document would not be able to
> tell the application how to properly interpret that term.
> The application might thus be aware of various options,
> but ultimately, it would have to guess.
> 

You assume that the interpretation of a term varies from one version of 
a model to another. In practice, that's not unheard of but uncommon. 
Most of the time, the same terms carry the same meanings from one 
version to the next. It's only the new terms added in new versions that 
take on new meanings.

Of course a RDDL document can contain content that's specifically 
relevant to particular versions of a vocabulary. That's what the 
xlink:arcrole attribute is used for.

-- 
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 Friday, 18 February 2005 10:44:54 UTC