a clarification?

Ok, I've been re-reading the namespace document again and some of the
wording in other sections kind of bugs me a little based on these
conversations.

Specifically, http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114/#dt-NSName
" [Definition:] The attribute's value, a URI reference, is the namespace 
  name identifying the namespace. The namespace name, to serve its 
  intended purpose, should have the characteristics of uniqueness and 
  persistence. It is not a goal that it be directly usable for retrieval 
  of a schema (if any exists). An example of a syntax that is designed 
  with these goals in mind is that for Uniform Resource Names [RFC2141]. 
  However, it should be noted that ordinary URLs can be managed in such 
  a way as to achieve these same goals."

This definition seems to say to me: You can't assume that the namespace
URI _always_ resolves to some resource but that it isn't prohibited either. 
And since it isn't prohibitied, I can build some infrastructure that
requires it, correct?  I personally wonder if the working group read the
other documents produced by the URN IETF Working Group. Especially
the ones that talked about URN resolution not being required for all
spaces but also not prohibited for any either...

Now, http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114/#dt-identical
  "[Definition:] URI references which identify namespaces are considered 
  identical when they are exactly the same character-for-character. Note 
  that URI references which are not identical in this sense may in fact 
  be functionally equivalent. Examples include URI references which differ 
  only in case, or which are in external entities which have different 
  effective base URIs. 

It seems to be that this document at least made the attempt to discuss
our present problem(s). The question the document seems to leave
unanswered is, what does it consider to be definitive:
syntactic equivalence or functional equivalence?

-MM

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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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Received on Thursday, 1 June 2000 11:46:36 UTC