Re: XBL Namespace uses the data: scheme

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> > 
> > That's just a temporary namespace while we wait for W3C's namespace 
> > policy to stop requiring namespace names to contain pseudo-random 
> > numbers.
> 
> By which you mean 2006?  As pseudo-random goes, it wouldn't pass many 
> tests for randomness, changing once a year.
> 
> Why not move to http://www.w3.org/2006/xbl now?

What does the "2006" number mean? It isn't the year the standard was 
invented, first published, completed, implemented, or anything like that. 
It's simply a random date in the process at which point the team was asked 
for a namespace URI.

Authors can't be expected to remember that date. Especially with the 
proliferation of namespaces they'd be expected to use when XBL is used to 
do graphics (which today would be at least four, namely XHTML, XBL, SVG, 
and XLink).

XHTML, or XBL2, or SVG, or any other technology, is that technology on its 
own merit, it has no intrinsic link to a particular year. In 2012, when 
people are still using these technologies, they'll ask themselves "what on 
earth were these people thinking" when they have to type /1999 for XHTML 
and XLink, /2000 for SVG, /2006 for XBL2, etc. (This situation is made no 
better by the fact that XLink is only in that list because of SVG, and yet 
they have different dates.)

What would have been wrong with just "http://w3.org/xbl", 
"http://w3.org/html", and "http://w3.org/svg"? (Other than the reason 
given in the namespace policy, namely that maintaining the redirects in 
the .htaccess file is too much work on the long term.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 29 June 2006 05:00:21 UTC