Re: Choose your namespace (Was : Personal view)

At 06:02 PM 6/19/00 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
>[...]    Whatever flexibility in the definition might
>be useful, the failure to define terms would make this a disaster for anyone
>trying to use the spec without having participated in the discussions that
>led to it.

This sounds like a call for wordsmithing, rather than a rejection of the 
proposal?

#g
--


At 06:02 PM 6/19/00 -0400, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
>Let's look at the proposal again:
>
>The proposal is to clarify the wording
>of this paragraph in the XML NS spec [1] to instead of saying:
>
>[[[Definition: URI references which identify namespaces are considered
>identical when they are exactly the same character-for-character. Note
>that URI references which are not identical in this sense may in fact be
>functionally equivalent. Examples include URI references which differ
>only in case, or which are in external entities which have different
>effective base URIs.]]]
>
>instead to say:
>
>[[[According to RFC 2396 a URI reference can be either a relative or an
>absolute URI. The scheme of an absolute URI identifies the URI space to
>which that URI belongs. A URI space is typically defined with a set of
>properties concerning uniqueness, normalization rules etc. as well as
>one or more default mechanisms for resolving URIs belonging to that URI
>space.
>
>Relative URIs are always defined within a context. Typical examples are
>relative references within the current document (fragment identifiers)
>and relative references between documents at the same or closely related
>level of hierarchy in the URI space. Within the same context, relative
>links remain internally consistent and can act as unique identifiers
>(within that context) without actually being expanded relative to the
>context within which they are defined.
>
>An application is responsible for knowing the context within which a
>relative link is defined. RFC 2396, section 5, provides several
>mechanisms for establishing the proper context within which relative
>URIs are defined. An application is also responsible for ensuring that
>relative identifiers are not treated as unique identifiers across
>contexts as ignorance of context can make distinct identifiers appear
>undifferentiated.]]]
>
>I continue to have a big problem with this: it takes text that defines when
>URI references are considered identical and replaces it by text that does not
>define when URI references are considered identical, and indeed does not use
>the word "identical" at all.    Whatever flexibility in the definition might
>be useful, the failure to define terms would make this a disaster for anyone
>trying to use the spec without having participated in the discussions that
>led to it.
>
>Paul Abrahams

------------
Graham Klyne
(GK@ACM.ORG)

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 07:34:08 UTC