Re: URIs quack like a duck

On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 10:15:38AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
> > Ahhh! You want to make it ILLEGAL to dereference a namespace to anything.
> 
> If you dereference the namespace name then without some extra knowledge
> about some special circumstance that you are in, you have no reason to
> suspect that the data returned has anything to do with the namespace.

Correct....

> <x xmlns="http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk"/>
> 
> is a document containing an element in a namespace named after my home
> page. The fact that I used that URI to name the namespace in this
> document in no way affects the resource identified by the URI.

Right. And it isn't required to. A URI can both differentiate
and locate. It isn't required to do either of them. In the case
where the URI used in the namespace dereferences to something
meaningful, then use it. If it doesn't or  you don't need to
dereference it, then don't....

> John's proposal was that if you wanted a URI to refer to the namespace
> you could use data:, prepended to the namespace name, which would be
> data:,http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk here.

I still don't understand the difference between these two proposals.
I guess it comes down to my own narrow view of the world. 

I.e. it seems that there is a rather large (and possibly majority)
constituency that uses XML namespaces in a world that specifically
deprecates assuming there is a network in which a given document
rests. I.e. database developers want to use XML as a data
description language and thus namespases have the same meaning
as database schema does. They're not connected in any way to 
a network.

My own admittedly narrow view is that if it isn't on the network
then I simply don't care.... (i.e we're an Internet company ;-)

I'm slowly modifying my opinions.... let me noodle on it a bit...

-MM


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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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Received on Thursday, 1 June 2000 11:02:43 UTC