Namespaces 1.1 Last Call -- I18N WG comments

Dear xml-names-editor,

This mail contains some of the comments of the I18N WG on:
   Namespaces in XML 1.1
   W3C Working Draft 5 September 2002
   http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xml-names11-20020905/WD-xml-names11-20020905-diff.html

The remaining comments will arrive in a separate mail.

We would be happy to work with you to overcome the problems we have
identified.  In case you find some of them too "picky", please recall
that we all (including the I18N WG) missed a number of serious gotchas
in the original Namespaces spec.  Let's try to get it right this time!


Section "1 Motivation and Summary"
----------------------------------

Text:

   if and only if they are exactly the same character-for-character.

Comments:

   Please make this statement more precise.  What, precisely, does
   "the same character-for-character" mean?  What, in this context, is a
   "character"?

   Please add examples, showing the various gotchas.  We give some
   suggestions later on.

Text:

   Case differences and escaping differences (including case
   differences in escape sequences) are therefore significant.

and:

   Examples include IRI references which differ only in case or
   escaping

Comments:

   What does "escaping" mean?  Does it include the use of NCRs,
   eg "&#x7E"?

   No, it doesn't :-)  Please make that clear by defining escaping.
   Please also include examples using NCRs, to demonstrate that these do
   *not* need to be identical, whether in their presence/absence, or in
   their case.

   In reality, NCRs are consumed as part of the conversion of the (user
   visible) XML character string to an IRI, and are not legal
   constituents of an IRI, but the readers don't know this.  They are
   likely to think that the (user visible) XML character string *is* the
   IRI.

Suggested examples:

   Consider:
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumé"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumé"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumé"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumé"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumÉ"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%c3%a9"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%C3%a9"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%c3%A9"
      xmlns="http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%C3%A9"
   where "é" has been defined to be "é".

   The first 4 are identical for the purpose of namespace name matching
   and have the normalized attribute value:
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumé

   The remaining 5 differ from the first 4, as well as from each other,
   and have the following normalized attribute values respectively:
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resumÉ
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%c3%a9
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%C3%a9
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%c3%A9
      http://www.example.org/namespaces/CV&resum%C3%A9

Text:

   escaping ,

Comments:

   Please remove the space before the comma.


Section "2 Declaring Namespaces"
--------------------------------

Text:

   Though they are not themselves reserved, it is inadvisable to use
   prefixed names whose LocalPart begins with the letters x, m, l, as
   these names would be reserved if used without a prefix.

Comments:

   Please add "in any case combination".


Section "7 Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs)"
---------------------------------------------------------

Comments:

   Please align this section with the XML specification, 2nd edition, as
   corrected by errata E26:
      http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-V10-2e-errata#E26
   and E27:
      http://www.w3.org/XML/xml-V10-2e-errata#E27

Important note:

   We think there are other, more serious, problems with this section,
   which we'll describe in a separate mail.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#AVNormalize

Misha Wolf
I18N WG Chair





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Received on Friday, 27 September 2002 16:08:37 UTC