Re: Mechanism, not policy [was: Attribute uniqueness...]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Carlisle <david@dcarlisle.demon.co.uk>

>No. You always know whether a a string is being used as a namespace
>name or as a resource identifier, so the fact that these two disjoint
>concepts happen to use the same set of strings is no problem.


That is not true. Were it true, then I suppose we could live with
your suggestion.  But I want to say that http://wwww.w3.org/2000/ns65 is
cool, or owned by W3C, or created in 2000, or whatever, and I
want to be able to do that to any resource, including namepsaces.
I want to be able to leverage all the apparatus of the web
to find out about a namespace, and I while a namespace name is a URI
I can do it immediately, just by queying for the URI.
The URI is this ubiquitous flexibility point.
Otherwise, I would have to add the concept of namesapce name to every
query language, every search engine, every reasoning system, every
medatadata language, every IPR langauge, and so on.

When you use a URI you get many benefits.

Do you always know whether a string is being used as an image
name or as a resource identifier?  Lucky we didn't make a new URI speace for
images!

>You may _wish_ the namespace to be the resource identified by the
>namespace name considered as a URI, but in general (and probably
>always) that is not the case. I see no way that the namespace
>mechanism could possibly be altered to make it the case.


I think it only requires you to say, "Ok, a namespace
is a form of resource" and we are clear.   I have given 2 suggestions for
changing the wording of the namespace spec.

>David


Tim

Received on Thursday, 8 June 2000 00:31:58 UTC