Re: The 'resource' identified by a namespace name URI should be the namespace

On Tue, 6 Jun 2000, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:

> "The attribute's value is the namespace name identifying the namespace.   It must
> have the form of a URI reference, although for the purposes of this specification
> the namespace name is treated as an uninterpreted character string.   Other
> specifications and applications may choose to attach their own interpretations to
> the namespace name and to place additional requirements on its form or
> interpretation.  (URI references are used in this context because they allow such
> additional interpretations.)"

This is an excellent proposal from the "literal" camp.

> [A] central registry wouldn't be such a bad idea anyway.

It would have severe scalability problems.

> Hmmm.  Suppose that you don't pay up, and so someone else gets control over this
> URI.   I don't see how that negatively impacts the use of that URI as a namespace
> name, at least as far as the namespace spec is concerned.

It undermines the notion that processing software can reliably interpret
the content of an element (or the value of an attribute) based on the
{namespace-name, local-part} pair.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
	"You need a change: try Canada"  "You need a change: try China"
		--fortune cookies opened by a couple that I know

Received on Tuesday, 6 June 2000 14:42:58 UTC