- From: David Carlisle <david@dcarlisle.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 23:27:18 +0100 (BST)
- To: masinter@attlabs.att.com
- CC: xml-uri@w3.org
> One simple way to accomplish (1) is to include the URI reference > used to identify the namespace as part of the namespace definition. this is a non starter. Namespaces don't have a definition. If suddenly it was mandated that they did, how would a namespace parser determine, given http://WWW.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform whether there existed, anywhere, a definition of a namespace that used an "equivalent" but different namespace name? A namespace parser has to decide quickly without reference to any external resource whether <a xmlns="http://WWW.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"/> a conforming document or (as you wish) an error. I see no way at all of making anything but a conforming document. > I think the distinction is moot: the recommendation should disallow them. > Software that uses them won't follow the recommendation, boo hoo. If the W3C were to hold its own recommendations in such low esteem that it would consider making two years worth of documents invalid by making incompatible change to the namespace rec then I fear it would lose any moral authority it has to enforce the recommendations that it does publish. XML has so far largely managed to avoid teh chaos of HTML where recommendations were in the main ignored by browser manufacturers, but if the W3C itself is prepared to break its own recommendations so lightly... Note that versioning the namespace rec would not be a solution, you have to make it clear which to which recommendation documents conform, which means either XML 2.0 or xmlns2="..." You can't just change the version number on the spec and then use the existing syntax. > The namespace document should disallow XML-document creators from ever > using more than one of these, so that XML-document recievers can use > string-equality for determining namespace equality. This seems to be unworkable and unenforcable. A namespace parser has to parse xmlns="xxxxxxxxxxxxx" without any knowledge about xxxxxxxxxxxxx so it has to accept any URI at all, if it doesn't know anything about the namespace at all, how can it know that some namespace differeing only in case is used in some other document, and so this document os non conforming? David
Received on Monday, 5 June 2000 18:35:54 UTC