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

I, for one, have been thinking in terms of (b), except that the description 
'macaronic' (as defined in my dictionary) seems to imply a degree of chaos 
that is not necessarily present.  'Multilingual' would be a more apt 
description.

#g


At 12:07 PM 6/20/00 +0100, John Aldridge wrote:
>At 15:58 19/06/00 -0400, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>
>>- a languge is (here) the set of names, their constraining syntax, and a
>>defined meaning for any combination of names which satisfies those
>>constraints on syntax.
>>
>>- a namespace corresponds to a language.  I know that some don't want this
>>model but honestly without it all work on XML should stop immediately and be
>>restarted with a proper footing. What is XHTML? a Language! That is actually
>>what the letter stands for. There is meaning in it.  The meaning is NOT
>>carried by out of band discussion, it is carried in the XHTML specification.
>
>I'm still struggling to understand this vision.  In the example:
>
><a:a xmlns:a="http://a.com">
><b:b xmlns:b="http://b.com">
></b:b>
></a:a>
>
>Do we have:
>
>(a) A document written in one language using the set of names 
>{http://a.com}a, {http://b.com}b.  This seems to be the natural 
>interpretation of Tim B-Ls first paragraph.
>
>(b) A macaronic document written in two languages.  This is how I 
>interpret the second paragraph.
>
>(c) A document which, although legal according to the namespace REC, 
>doesn't conform to the vision of how the web will be built, and therefore 
>doesn't need to be considered.  I sincerely hope that this is _not_ the case.
>
>I _suspect_ that Tim-BL will answer (b), but I think that many of us 
>(myself, certainly) have been thinking in terms of (a).
>
>The important difference, it seems to me, is whether metadata is more 
>usefully associated with a type (a) language or a type (b) language.  Will 
>you ever need to make statements about an element which apply only in the 
>context of another element from a different namespace, for example:
>
>     <b:b/> elements can be nested arbitrarily deeply when they
>     occur inside <a:a1/> elements, but may not be nested when
>     they occur in <a:a2/> elements.
>--
>Cheers,
>John

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

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 11:53:07 UTC