Re: Choose your namespace (Was : Personal view)

> It
> is inherently impossible to guarantee that the rule in section 5.3 about
> uniqueness of attributes is detected in all cases.

It is only impossible to do that if you so radically change the
namespace spec to make that so. As currently definied it is trivial
to guarantee that, and that is why namespaces are defined in that way.

The _essential_ feature of namespace names is that that they support
rapid and 100% accurate comparison that does not depend on the parser
being used. The current namespace spec provides that. Any features you
get from using URI syntax are not essential (or even used) by a
namespace parser, (but may be used by applications layered over the
parser, of course). If using URI syntax makes people (two years too
late) seriously suggest that that implies that a namespace parser
has to be aware of all this extra baggage, then perhaps we should
consider giving up on URI altogether for namespace names and using
java package names or some other naming scheme that is less likely to
trigger such reactions.

While we can discuss whether to make changes to the spec to alleviate
some perceived problems with relative URI which were the original
cause for starting this list, there is no justification at all for
completely rewriting it and making even a simple matter of parsing it
and deciding which namespaces are used in a document "impossible to
guarantee".

David

Received on Monday, 19 June 2000 17:29:16 UTC