The "deprecate/fixed-base" option

I would like there to be more consideration of the option I will call
"deprecate/fixed-base".  This has two parts:

1) The Namespace Rec is modified to indicate that relative URI references
as namespace names are considered a Bad Thing.  I believe that all shades
of opinion agree on this, given that it is easy to construct URI references
that are *ad hoc* but still technically absolute.

2) As an interpretation rule, all relative URI references are to be
absolutized relative to the fixed base URI
"http://www.w3.org/2000/Namespaces/base/".  This technically conforms
to the language of RFC 2396, clause 5.1.1:

	Within certain document media types, the base URI of
	the document can be embedded within the content itself
	such that it can be readily obtained by a parser.

Of course, no base URI can be easier to obtain than one which is
implicitly hard-wired into all namespace documents...

I think the various opinion groups will see it as follows:

Absolutize: every namespace name *can* be converted to a URI
(plus possible fragment ID).  The rules for namespace URI references
will be different from the rules for other URI references in documents.

Literal: literal comparison will continue to work, near enough:
"./foo" and "foo" namespaces will technically compare differently.

Forbid: the whole idea of relative namespace names is labeled bad,
even if technically permitted.

-- 
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 Wednesday, 7 June 2000 19:25:38 UTC