RE: What is at the end of the namespace?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Leigh Dodds [mailto:ldodds@ingenta.com]
> Sent: 21 November, 2001 12:17
> To: Andy Powell
> Cc: www-talk@w3.org
> Subject: RE: What is at the end of the namespace?
> 
> 
> 
> > So, I'll ask the same question I asked a few days back...  
> if I make an
> > RDF statement about http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/, am I making a
> > statement about the abstract SMIL namespace or am I making 
> a statement
> > about the HTML page that the uri resolves to?
> 
> FWIW, I'd say the HTML page.
> 
> What statements would you want to make about a namespace?
> 
> You mention the dc:creator of the namespace, but wouldn't it 
> be more logical to make a statement about the schema, or vocabulary 
> which defines that namespace?
> 
> I think the most I'd say about a namespace is that it is an 
> identifier.

Exactly. A namespace is just "punctuation", per se.

A namespace is not a vocabulary, even if a vocabulary may be
grounded in one single namespace.

Multiple disjunct vocabularies may all be defined in the 
same namespace.

A single vocabulary may include terms grounded in
different namespaces.

A namespace is not a doctype or schema.

A doctype/schema may use a single vocabulary grounded in a 
single namespace, or it may use several vocabularies, each 
of which have terms grounded in different namespaces.

Several doctypes/schemata may use the same vocabulary.

Namespaces are punctuation. Nothing more.

Cheers,

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 22 November 2001 03:22:07 UTC