Re: Moving on (was Re: URIs quack like a duck)

>>>If the spec was going to be re-issued with descriptions of good
>>>practice I would also be in favour of it (or an additional spec)
>>>recommending some format of file to place at the namespace URI
>>>in the case that you do use a dereferencable URI scheme.
>>
>>That would be a note.  I think that it might be a good idea to point out
>>for example that
>>- such a document is not mandatory
>>- the document may include xml-schema
>>- a document can contain xml-schema and also other information
>
>Gack.  I'd hold off on this until you're ready for Namespaces in XML 2.0,
>and have some firmer idea of what kind of document you'd actually like to
>see at the end of those dererefenced URIs.


The whole philosophy of the power of *identifying* something is that you
don't have to define in advance all the ways in which other systems and
languages can refer to the thing identified.

Thank goodness that we didn't pause introducing images into the web (or
links for that matter) until we had a "firmer idea of what kind of document
we'd actually like to see at the end of the link."  Straight off there were
all kinds of MIME documents and weirer. We didn't wait intil the PNG and SVG
specifications were ready to elegantly define images before defining <IMG/>.

Fortunately, the flexibility point which is a URI has allowed great growth,
both in the languages which refer using it and in those of documents to
which they refer.  And these two directions of growth have been in quite
differenmt directions.

All you can say is that any document should be a representation of the
namespace. A schema of course represents on facet of a namspace, and an RDF
schema another. But please can we get on an leave the hook there for future
development!  Some of these applications are running.  Are we going to ask
any document
which dares to be provided in response to a query with a namespace URI to be
submitted to this list first for approval?

Tim BL

Received on Friday, 2 June 2000 23:24:15 UTC