Re: Language = Namespace. was: How namespace names might be used

"Paul W. Abrahams" wrote:
> 
> Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> > Julian Reschke wrote:
> >
> > > 1) The XSLT namespace name is an URI ref that currently points to an HTML
> > > document "describing" the XSLT namespace,
> >
> > no, it points to a resource which is represented by an HTML document
> > describing it.
> 
> That seems to me to be a statement about the world as you believe it ought to be,
> but not a statement about the world as it is.

No, it is not just my opinion/hope.
It is an application of the standard terminology to the case mentioned
by Julian Reschke in his message of Tue, 20 Jun 2000 00:17:08 +0200;
namely the case of the XSLT namespace name,
http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform .

>  Certainly nothing in the namespace
> spec states or implies that the namespace name is an HTML document of any kind,

nor did I say any such thing. I said:
	a namepsace name is a URI
	a URI identifies a resource
	a resource may be represented by an HTML document

supporting argument:

	a namepsace name is a URI
		this is almost the case per the namespace spec,
		modulo details with relative URI references; I think
		it is the intent of the namespace spec
	a URI identifies a resource
		this is standard terminology from the URI spec,
		imported into the HTTP, HTML, XLink, RDF, etc. specs
	a resource may be represented by an HTML document
		this is standard terminology from the URI spec,
		imported into the HTTP, HTML, XML, etc. specs

All of this is completely standardized stuff (in contrast
to the self-describing web stuff, which is not, yet).

> let alone an HTML document describing the namespace.  Indeed, the namespace name
> need not belong to the http scheme at all.

Right, it may not. But in this case,
http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform ,
it is.


Once again, for convenience:

      "Resource
         A resource can be anything that has identity.  Familiar
         examples include an electronic document, an image, a service
         (e.g., "today's weather report for Los Angeles"), and a
         collection of other resources.  Not all resources are network
         "retrievable"; e.g., human beings, corporations, and bound
         books in a library can also be considered resources.
         The resource is the conceptual mapping to an entity or set of
         entities, not necessarily the entity which corresponds to that
         mapping at any particular instance in time.  Thus, a resource
         can remain constant even when its content---the entities to
         which it currently corresponds---changes over time, provided
         that the conceptual mapping is not changed in the process."

        -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

"resource 
     A network data object or service that can be identified by a URI,
as
     defined in section 3.2. Resources may be available in multiple
     representations (e.g. multiple languages, data formats, size, and
     resolutions) or vary in other ways. 
entity 
     The information transferred as the payload of a request or
     response. An entity consists of metainformation in the form of
     entity-header fields and content in the form of an entity-body, as
     described in section 7. "
        -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
        aka http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec1.html#sec1.4

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 11:22:53 UTC