Re: A proposed solution

> > What you are proposing is another "case A" [3] scenario that several
> > people have pointed out as flawed.
>
> I am not proposing it, it is a W3C recommendation.
> It is not `case A' (the same namespace name resolving two different
> resources) it is the `harmless' `case B' (two different namespace
> names, differing by case, resolving to the same resource).

I am sorry but this is simply not what you have been saying in other
mails. Take for example your statment in [1] where you say

    If I need to define two namespaces to use in some document then I can
use
    http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk and http://WWW.DCARLISLE.DEMON.CO.UK
    it is _not_ at the liberty of some consumer of the document to decide
    that it understands DNS names and URI scheme sufficiently that it
    can decide the namespaces are equivalent. If I'd wanted to use the
    same namespace in both cases, I would have done so.

These *cannot* be two different namespaces with different semantics - this
is *exactly* a case A - what at one level (the naming authority) is
identical, you want to be different at a higher level.

Yes, you have to make a choice - if you want to use DNS names and the like
as provided by HTTP URIs you have to follow the semantics. What is OK to
say is that a namespace parser doesn't have to KNOW that these are
identical but you when writing the document cannot assign different
semantics to the two names.

If you want to use a URI where there is absolutely no discussion about
whether parts of it is case-sensitive or not, use a GUID.

> Of course even the `case A' situation is not considered flawed
> by those people arguing for the literal interpretation, which has
> always been the majority view of any list that has ever discussed
> this, as far as I can tell. Two instances of the same relative URI
> reference may resolve to different resources, depending on context,
> and namespace names are defined to be URI references, so aquire
> the same feature. W3C can change this if they like, but it is not
> flawed.

If you want that then use a file URI or a news URI. You pick the namespace
you want with the semantics you want - URIs allow you to do that - but you
simply can't build a Web out of file: identifiers. So unless you can prove
that it is possible to build a decentralized Web out of file: identifiers
(without saying that everybody should move into AFS) then I can't see that
you have a case at all.

Henrik

Received on Monday, 19 June 2000 18:22:47 UTC