Namespace names and IRI references

Could we please, when the final version of XML Namespaces 1.1 comes out,
have absolute clarity as to whether or not a document is
namespace-well-formed if it uses a namespace name that is not a valid IRI
Reference.

I've just been engaged in a debate where different people reading the
current draft came up with completely different conclusions on this point.

If such a document is to be rejected by a parser, the spec also needs a much
clearer definition of exactly what an IRI is. The present definition says
that it's a string that can be converted to a URI Reference by escaping
certain characters, but it doesn't say precisely what constitutes a valid
URI Reference. 

RFC 2396 itself says "To understand what is a valid URI, both the grammar
and the associated description have to be studied." - which leaves the
matter very unclear indeed. For example, http://21345 is not a valid URI:
but you need to understand the rules for the "http" scheme to know that, and
those rules can change over time.

Either the namespace name must be a valid IRI, in which case the spec needs
to say exactly what that means. Or it can be any string you like, in which
case all the stuff about IRIs could be thrown out as unnecessary verbiage.

Michael Kay

Received on Wednesday, 27 November 2002 09:48:40 UTC